Get your popcorn- Death Race into theaters early

HOLLYWOOD, California — It's common for the release of Hollywood films to be pushed back. After all, post-production can be delayed or the reaction of test audiences can frighten filmmakers into re-shoots. And it's exceptionally rare for the release date of a film to be moved forward.

The upcoming car-centric film Death Race, however, will be released earlier than first announced as NBC Universal moves it onto its summer release schedule. Originally set for release on September 26, it will instead appear at a multiplex near you (and virtually every other multiplex that's nowhere near you) on August 22.

All this schedule shifting happens on the heels of test screenings where, Internet rumors have it, audiences went nuts for Death Race. Nuts as in, Universal thinks it can make more money by cramming the movie into the prime summer months rather than waiting for the fall when its heavily male, mostly young audience will be going back to school.

Starring big-time action star Jason Statham with support from serious actor types like Joan Allen and Ian McShane, Death Race is a loose re-engineering and re-imagination of 1975's cult classic cheapo Death Race 2000 — the movie that almost made Sylvester Stallone famous. But instead of a cross-country road race where drivers score points for taking out pedestrians, the new Death Race features a three-day bloody race inside the walls of a vast prison system of the near future, where convicted felons compete and combat in a world-televised spectacle for glory and freedom.

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (Alien vs. Predator), the entire surely-to-be-R-rated film was made without the use of a single computer-generated vehicle, explosion or stunt. All the cars are real, all the stunts are real and there should be plenty of gunfire and blood, too. In short, Speed Racer it ain't.

What this means to you: Some good old-fashioned motorized movie mayhem hits the big screen one month sooner. — John Pearley Huffman, Correspondent