During my interview with George Clooney the other day on the set of REEL TALK, I asked him why a football movie is being released in April. After all, gridiron fans' off season is in full swing, and the only thing football in the news is the upcoming NFL draft and news from minicamps.

Watch the interview after the jump to see how he skillfully skirted the issue. It's possible that last minute rewrites--which caused Clooney to get into a dispute with the Writers' Guild and resulted in a refusal to give him a co-writing screen credit--may have delayed the release. Other factors may have come into play as well; distribution -- strategy to market the film overseas where, with the demise of NFL Europe, the game no longer has a presence on the other side of the Atlantic. They can play all the NFL games they want in London, but it just hasn't caught on there.

Alison made a good point in one of our many discussions in between taping REEL TALK; (hard to believe we don't just sit and tape the show nonstop). She remembered some baseball movie which opened in the winter and recalled how baseball nuts like me loved even a taste of the game when the real thing was dormant.

Bottom line -- if a film is good, it really shouldn't matter when it's released.