Paramount has delayed the scheduled opening of John Travolta's new film Numbers, following the embarrassing failure of the project with which he's currently, inextricably associated, Battlefield Earth. The New York Post says that Paramount, which had planned a July 14 release of the film, now says only that "the film is currently scheduled for a summer release." Analysts speculated that the studio wanted to distance itself from the Battlefield debacle. The Hollywood Reporter told the Post, "on the heels of Battlefield Earth having crashed and burned, Travolta would do well to lay low for a period of time. If he does interviews now, all people are going to ask him about is Battlefield Earth."
According to Robert Bucksbaum, president of box-office tracking agency Reel Source, "it could very well be they [the studio] wanted to distance themselves from Battlefield Earth, which left a bad taste in moviegoers' mouths."
But Numbers director Nora Ephron sees it differently. "The July opening was a hilariously optimistic thing on the part of [studio] people," she tells the Post. "It was always our profoundest hope we'd be coming out in the winter." The film stars Travolta as a lowlife TV meteorologist who tries to coerce a lottery ball girl (Lisa Kudrow) into rigging the draw.
