New Line Cinema is releasing its awards hopeful "Little Children," a comic melodrama about suburban parents, on Oct. 6, fresh from festival showings in Toronto and Telluride, Colo. "If we come out in October, we beat everybody. And if it becomes a contender, so be it," says Russell Schwartz, New Line's marketing chief. "We want to be the movie that people are comparing to, for better or worse. You want to either be first, or last."

Paramount Vantage, the art house imprint of Paramount Pictures, will have shown its Oscar hopeful "Babel," a drama about interconnected families, at festivals in Telluride, Toronto, London and San Sebastian, Spain, in the weeks ahead of its Oct. 27 release. "My primary obligation is to do well commercially with the film," says John Lesher, Paramount Vantage's president. By opening earlier in the fall, he says, he not only will have access to more theaters but also the right kind of theaters — those catering to cinéastes.

For the lucky, the film festival strategy works. The pedigree of "Bobby," the film about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, didn't look so promising before the Venice Film Festival. It was, after all, a film from actor-turned-director Emilio Estevez, charter member of the Brat Pack. Then the Italians gave it a rapturous reception.

Weinstein Co. co-founder Harvey Weinstein boasts about the lengthy standing ovation in Venice. "I woke up and read all three Italian newspapers," Weinstein says from Italy. "All three of them were translated to me, and they were strong reviews. If people are skeptical they're in for a good time, they'll go in with lowered expectations and be pleased as a result."

Weinstein says this fall is a particularly good time to release political films. "There's no question, as people write about the movie, you would be reminded — not wrongly — that this is an election year. When people see or think about 'Bobby,' they'll expect more of their own candidates."

Relocating Oscar hopefuls from the winter to the fall is not without risk, says Peter Rice, president of Fox Searchlight, the specialized film unit that will unveil its Oscar contender "The Last King of Scotland," about Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, on Wednesday.

"Once the festival season begins, the entertainment press tends to view the film through the prism of awards season," Rice says. "That can be incredibly positive if you're one of the films that is strongly received. You're in a position to gain from the enormous press coverage." But if your upscale film doesn't get the kudos from the festival crowd, Rice says, "It's very hard to create a profile for the movie."

Nevertheless, some distributors have chosen to put out their award hopefuls in late summer, as ThinkFilm did with "Half Nelson," a look at a troubled elementary school teacher. "I opened the film in August because I wanted to get a jump on all of those October movies," says ThinkFilm's theatrical head, Mark Urman.

Some movies are better served by not coming out at the end of the year. Paramount and DreamWorks are releasing "Flags of Our Fathers" on Oct. 20. "This is not an easy movie to watch," says Terry Press, the DreamWorks marketing honcho. "And movies like this are very hard to take during the holidays. It has death and war and graphic violence — not something you want to watch with your eggnog."

Producer Graham King's previous Oscar nominees "The Aviator" and "Gangs of New York," both directed by Martin Scorsese, were released in December. But this time, King and Scorsese's latest collaboration, the crime drama "The Departed," will roll into theaters Oct. 6.

"This, to me, is much more of a commercial thriller," King says. " 'The Aviator' and 'Gangs of New York' needed an academy push for the box office. But we didn't approach 'The Departed' as an academy movie. But if we end up getting awards attention for it, I would be thrilled."

rachel.abramowitz@latimes.com

john.horn@latimes.com