While he’s had great success with films such as Oculus, Hush and Ouija: Origin of Evil, Mike Flanagan hasn’t had so much luck with Before I Wake.

The film, starring Thomas Jane, Kate Bosworth and Jacob Tremblay, was moved around the release schedule so many times that it became impossible to keep track of, and it’s now off the map completely.

So what exactly happened and when, if ever, will we finally get to see Before I Wake?

Flanagan relayed the full story to Mick Garris on the new episode of Post Mortem today.

“It was a great deal [with Relativity], and it was a big fat wide release,” Flanagan recalled. “And so we sold the movie to Relativity, and we had a release date, and we were all set, and I moved on to the next project. And then things just got weird. Everything kind of stalled. We weren’t getting trailers and posters and materials. We didn’t know it at first, but it was because of the collapse [of Relativity]. And so they moved it off the date.”

Flanagan continued, “Then we started to really learn about how much trouble the company was in, and they finally came to us, and it was like, ‘Yes, we’re going to file Chapter 11, but we’re confident we’re going to pull out of it.’ But they’d pushed the date back twice at that point, and we had international buyers that had picked it up based on the wide release commitment in the States. So we kicked and screamed and shook our fists, but there was no choice but to kind of wait it out and hope they emerged from bankruptcy and would pick up where they left off.”

“My suspicion — and I’m just speaking for myself — is that the theatrical option’s pretty well burned at this point,” he added. “Our international distributors waited for a while for Relativity, but then a lot of them just started releasing it, and so it got pirated very quickly. And then we had this wave of negative reviews that came in, mostly criticizing the movie for not being a horror movie and being marketed as one. So, between those reviews, and the fact that it’s been so exposed online, I’d be very surprised if after all these years somebody wanted to take a shot at it theatrically.”

Soon after the podcast hit, Flanagan clarified some of his comments on Facebook.

“We’re very optimistic about a variety of options in a post-Relativity world for the movie, and I certainly wasn’t trying to imply that the film will never be released – far from it,” he noted. “I’m very proud of the movie, and we have a number of avenues that could get it to its audience, even if it doesn’t end up being a wide theatrical. We’re still determined and optimistic for the film to finally be available, and weighing all of our options at the moment.”

We’ll report more as we learn it.