EXCLUSIVE: 20th Century Fox is swapping dates with two of its fall movies. The Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain-starring The Martian is moving out of Thanksgiving and up to October 2nd and Victor Frankenstein starring James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe is stepping into the Thanksgiving date. That moves what looks to be the better film — Ridley Scott’s The Martian up by a month — and I gotta say the well-cut trailer for it which dropped this week looks like the movie has the goods. The move to October keeps the film away from the second weekend of the popular Lionsgate franchise Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 and off of the same weekend as Disney’s Good Dinosaur. The leave-no-man-behind drama in space is now going to be dropping on the same date as Gravity (2013) so hopes are it will spark the type of massive audience draw and continue to play through the fall. The trailer for The Martian has tallied up 18 million views so far — way more than Gravity got in its first week out — so perhaps it will ignite the box office in a big way for the studio.

By making the switch, Fox takes the Frankenstein film out of October and before the Halloween holiday and puts it into the other slot. The latest version loosely based on the classic Mary Shelley novel follows the relationship between the doctor and his assistant Igor with the monster not appearing until the end of the film. This is the second time the film has been pushed. It was originally skedded for January. Enough said.

The Martian will now bow on a weekend with the following films: Focus Films’ London Has Fallen, The Weinstein Co.’s Adam Jones starring Bradley Cooper and Sony’s The Walk starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt.