• Los Angeles Times, Thursday, December 24, 2009 9:17 AM

"Lovely Bones," a chilling drama from Peter Jackson that features a murdered girl from the beyond, was originally expected to appeal to a sophisticated, adult audience. But that didn't prove to be the case in test screenings this fall or when it opened earlier this month at three theaters in Los Angeles and New York.

Paramount Pictures, which inherited the film from its former subsidiary DreamWorks, found that young women reacted the most favorably to "Bones" despite some fairly intense moments. It has decided to delay its nationwide release from Christmas Day to Jan. 15 and is retooling the marketing for the PG-13 movie to reach females 13 to 20, Claudia Eller and Ben Fritz report.

The studio is screening the movie aggressively for high school- and college-age girls while it continues to play in three theaters. In the end, it will spend $85 million in worldwide marketing and distribution expenses in addition to the $70 million the movie cost to produce.

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