It is one of the most expensive productions of this summer's blockbuster movies. It's based on one of the most critically acclaimed and fondly remembered TV series of all time. It's got a high-profile cast led by Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman and Sean Connery. It opens simultaneously in Ireland, Britain and the US next Friday.
But Warner Bros, which is distributing The Avengers on both sides of the Atlantic, has decided to release it with no advance screenings for the critics.
The film features Ralph Fiennes, an Oscar nominee for Schindler's List, as the suave, bowler-hatted crime fighter, John Steed, and Uma Thurman, who received an Oscar nomination for Pulp Fiction, as his leather-clad partner, Mrs Emma Peel, a jujitsu expert and a doctor in meteorological science. The roles were originally played on television by Patrick McNee and Diana Rigg.
Updated to the 1990s, the film version pits Steed and Peel against the villainous and utterly amoral Sir August De Wynter, played by Sean Connery. His dastardly - and reasonably topical - scheme is to control the weather and bring Britain and the world to their knees.
The cast also includes the Irish actress, Fiona Shaw, the British comedian, Eddie Izzard, and the versatile character actor, Jim Broadbent.
"Warner Bros wants the public to see the film for themselves," a spokeswoman for the distributors told The Irish Times yesterday, explaining the company's decision not to screen The Avengers in advance for the press. "The public awareness level on the film is very high here."
Despite its unwillingness to preview the film for the media, Warner Bros sent out video trailers of The Avengers to the press months ago.
It is most unusual, to say the least, for any film which opens in Dublin not to receive a press preview in advance of its opening. In fact, in recent years film distributors have tended to arrange more than one preview in the case of bigger-budget pictures.
The end-of-the-world blockbuster, Armageddon, which goes on release in Ireland today, had an open-air screening in Temple Bar last Tuesday night, to which press were invited, in addition to its media preview two weeks ago.
The feature film of the television series, The X-Files, was given a press preview in Dublin yesterday and will have an invitational screening before it opens on August 21st.
In that context, the decision not to preview The Avengers is all the more surprising given that its principal rivals at the box-office will be Armageddon and The X-Files.