Amazon MGM moves 'How to Rob a Bank' off Labor Day weekend to November 13

Amazon MGM has taken David Leitch's heist picture off Labor Day weekend. "How to Rob a Bank," which was set for September 4, now opens on November 13, a move of a little more than two months. Deadline reported the change on Friday and framed it as a play for a younger crowd: the studio has been watching how 18-to-34-year-olds respond to the marketing and wants the film sitting closer to Thanksgiving, when that audience actually goes out.

That is the official version. Jordan Ruimy at World of Reel offered a blunter possibility, writing that the most recent cut he had heard about "did not look 100% ready," and wondering whether the delay has something to do with that. Neither Amazon MGM nor Leitch has said anything about the edit, and there is no reporting that confirms it, so treat that as a rumor with a name attached to it rather than a fact.

What moved, and into what

The old date was a soft one. Labor Day weekend is where studios put movies they like but do not love, and Leitch would have been sharing the corridor with the horror thriller "Onslaught" and Ryan Reynolds' "Mayday."

The new date is not soft at all. November 13 already holds J.J. Abrams' "The Great Beyond," his first film in seven years; "Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol" with Johnny Depp; Peter Farrelly's "I Play Rocky," about Sylvester Stallone clawing his boxing movie into existence; and "Paper Tiger," the Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson crime drama that played Cannes. Five wide releases on one Friday is a traffic jam, and every one of them is then running for cover a month later, when "Dune: Part Three" and "Avengers: Doomsday" land on December 18 and take the oxygen with them.

So the trade is real. Leitch gets a bigger, more awake moviegoing month and a holiday tail. He also gets four competitors on opening day and a five-week window before the two biggest movies of the year arrive. A studio that thought it had a Labor Day movie does not usually reroute it into that unless it thinks the film can hold.

The movie

Hoult plays Ryan, the platinum-blond leader of a masked crew that robs banks with blank-loaded rifles, films the whole thing, posts it, and argues online that what they are doing is moral. Some of the money goes to charity. The crew includes Anna Sawai, Pete Davidson, and Rhenzy Feliz. John C. Reilly is the investigator chasing them, working with a hacker on house arrest played by Zoë Kravitz, which reunites Kravitz and Hoult from "Mad Max: Fury Road." Christian Slater is the bank boss with a personal grudge in the middle of it.

Mark Bianculli wrote the script. Brian Grazer, Jeb Brody, and Allan Mandelbaum produce for Imagine, with Kelly McCormick and Leitch for 87North. It shot in Pittsburgh starting in June 2025.

Leitch's last one, "The Fall Guy," got the reviews and did not get the audience, which is the kind of result that makes a studio think hard about where a movie opens rather than whether it opens. A gang of viral bank robbers who think they are the good guys is a premise built for the exact demographic Amazon MGM says it is chasing. Whether the movie can carry a November Friday against Abrams and Depp is a different question, and we will find out on the 13th.