It will be an absolute miracle of Green Hornet ever gets made. It’s been nothing but trouble for the film, which started out as a Kevin Smith project which stalled, rebooted to a different version by Seth Rogen, then stalled again as it hired and then unhired both its Kato and director. Then they brought in Michel Gondry to direct and Jay Chou to play Kato and everything seemed fine… until.

Box Office Mojo reports that the film has been delayed yet again. The Green Hornet’s release date has been bumped back from July 7 to December 17, 2010. So why the change?

HitFix has a story in which they claim Seth Rogen explains the release date bump, except of course he doesn’t. What he does do is explain why bumping the movie back could be a good thing for them because, obviously, it gives them even more time to work on it. Absent from his explanation is the real reason why the movie changed dates.

While superhero movies do well in the summer, releasing them during the holiday season is always a dicey proposition. Releasing it in December puts it in the uncomfortable company of such superhero flops as The Spirit, Punisher: War Zone, and Blade: Trinity. In fact, though the summer months are absolutely lousy with successful superhero releases not since the original Superman way back in 1978 has any superhero movie released in December has gone on to be a major hit. Christmas is Kryptonite. Green Hornet has just committed superhero movie suicide.