Two Grindhouse stories for the price of one, just like the film itself really. News is that Kurt Russell was not the first choice to play Stuntman Mike and the other two names are no real surprise, also it looks like the UK is set to see the UK audience really late, and by that I mean two whole months after the US...

First up, Kurt Russell has revealed that he's not bothered that two other actors were considered for his role before him, after all it happens all the time and he has given up roles to other actors too. From PR Inside.

"I know Mickey [Rourke] was a possibility and he was really close to doing it and I think Ving Rhames was close to doing it too. I think there were a number of actors who were probably close to doing it at different times."

Then, with the Action Man Eagle Eyes from Obsessed with Film we see that the IMDB release dates for Grindhouse are looking quite bizarre. The US get to see it relesead on the 6th April, then Australia are up next on the 31st of May - what a wait that is, over a full month before they get to see it, then it's a day later (possibly since there's no actual date mentioned) that we see it in the UK.

After that there's the European release where the film is split into two, with Death Proof hitting various countries through June and Planet Terror returning through July, August and September.

Seems a really strange schedule to me and I wouldn't be surprised if this is all provisional to see how the film does in the US with the full running time, but here's the full list from IMDB:

USA - 6 April 2007
Australia - 31 May 2007
UK - June 2007
Finland - 1 June 2007 ('Death Proof')
Norway - 1 June 2007 ('Death Proof')
Sweden - 1 June 2007 ('Death Proof')
Belgium - 6 June 2007 ('Death Proof')
France - 6 June 2007 ('Death Proof')
Netherlands - 7 June 2007 ('Death Proof')
Germany - 14 June 2007 ('Death Proof')
Netherlands - 19 July 2007 ('Planet Terror')
Germany - 26 July 2007 ('Planet Terror')
Belgium - 1 August 2007 ('Planet Terror')
Norway - 14 September 2007 ('Planet Terror')
Finland - 21 September 2007 ('Planet Terror')
Sweden - 28 September 2007 ('Planet Terror')

Now is it just me or does that look really stupid? I mean the idea of splitting it is bad enough, but having such a huge gap between the release dates just doesn't see right. Then there's the issue of some countries having to wait for ages to see Planet Terror after watching Death Proof, isn't that going to spoil momentum? Surely nothing more than weeks would be wanted between releases?

To me this seems like a killer schedule - something that the US are great at doing on TV - and it isn't really expected to do well in Europe. That or the whole thing is very provisional. If you're from any of these split release countries how do you feel about the gap between the two films, and for everyone else what about this long wait? Are we just going to see the US pirates making a fortune selling ripped off copies like mad?