We’ve been notified that Michael Cera’s new movie Youth In Revolt has been delayed. Instead of releasing the film on October 30th as originally planned, The Weinstein Company is pushing it back to January 15, 2010.

Unless you’re an Oscar contender going wider, historically early January is generally where bad movies go to die. Except most of the buzz around Youth in Revolt has been relatively good. It’s gotten solid reviews at the Toronto Film Festival and the trailer was mostly well received. So what’s the deal?

The Weinstein Company has been under heavy scrutiny recently, after a string of box office flops. But now they’re riding high on Inglourious Basterds, one of their first truly big hits and a shoe-in as an early Oscar contender. But Weinstein is short on money and resources. They could be pushing Youth in order to focus whatever they have on an Oscar campaign for Tarantino.

Dropping Youth on January 15th puts it up against some stiff competition in the form of Denzel Washington’s post-apocalyptic action movie The Book of Eli and Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones which goes wide for the first time that weekend. It also puts it up against another Weinstein release, the computer animated sequel Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs Evil Unless they’re planning a Hoodwinked/Youth in Revolt

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