We’ve got a brief update on one of the most anticipated releases, Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained. You can now officially call the spaghetti action/western one of your most anticipated films of 2012, as The Weinstein Company has set it for a December 25th, 2012 release, via BoM.

We just reported today that Will Smith is looking less and less likely to take the lead role, and that Jamie Foxx may be edging closer for the title role of ex-slave-turned-bounty hunter, Django. Leonardo DiCaprio is our main villain, slave owner Calvin Candie, while the great Oscar-winning Inglourious Basterds star Christoph Waltz is German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultze. Samuel L. Jackson plays Candie’s right-hand man and head house-slave Stephen.

As for other December 2012 releases, we have Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on the 14th, Phillip Noyce‘s Hunter Killer a week later, joined by Ang Lee‘s Life of Pi and Gore Verbinski’s Lone Ranger. Expect the busy month to fill up, but it is interesting to see TWC pick this awards-centric date. I doubt we will see a Cannes premiere, with a release so far away from May. It could do the fall festival circuit, but with the topline stars Tarantino is gunning for, I don’t even know if it needs the buzz.

What do you think about TWC setting a Christmas release for Django?

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