The generally accepted use of the Production Year field is for the year the film was generally released.  So for 300 and Knocked Up...2007.

The field name and the definition could use work but what i state above is how i, and i think most people use it.

Quoting TheMadMartian:

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I understand it the same way tweeter does.  General release, not film festival release...though, not everybody agrees.

I understand it the same way, but you're right when you say not everybody agrees.

I also wonder what everyone's thoughts on the term General Release are. Isn't something like the Austin-Butt-Numb-A-Thon general? I mean really, if you look at it, anyone could actually get in. There's an elimination process yes, but it's technically open to everyone, making it fairly general. I could see an arguement against this one however because you can't actually BUY the ticket to go to the theatre to see it.

Or a film festival in general? The film Crash was released at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2004. The majority of the profiles in DVDProfiler have that listed as the Production Year (it opened wide in 2005 and is noted by Oscar trivia experts as being one of the only films to be released in the previous year [2004] and win the Best Picture award for the following year [2005]). That festival is completely open to the general public as far as I know, you just have to buy tickets and get to it. Doesn't that constitute a general release? A release of the film that you can buy tickets to and go watch it at the theatre? You can do that at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Everyone's thoughts on what a general release is (or theatrical release as the rules put it) seem to differ. I know this first hand because some of the passionate arguements (in the good sense!!) I got through pm's when I originally brought up the Production Year for the film The Evil Dead last year sometime showed me just how different these thoughts are!    For that film, would the Detroit Premiere in 1981 be a general release? Would all the numerous film festival showings open to the public in 1982 be general releases?

Lots of tricky questions that many have different answers for. I agree with Tweeter, the field name and definition could use some work. It's actually skewing some CLT results quite bad. I did a common name thread of Robert Tapert last year, and the "common name" through the CLT at the time was Robert G. Tapert. It was shown that the ONLY film he was credited this way in was Evil Dead 2 and that Robert Tapert should be the common name. I've done some clean-up since then and the common name is now correct in the CLT results, but Robert G. Tapert still has 43 titles under his name in the CLT results because of so many skewed production years which no one can agree on (even if the profile contained the incorrect name, he should have maybe... 15... at max).

A little work indeed! 

I should clarify my original post.  When I say 'general' release, I mean one of two types of releases:

Limited Release - playing in a select few theaters across the country.

Wide Release - playing nationally.

There are, of course, exceptions but that is how I define the 'Original Theatrical Release Date'...which is what the rules call for.

Quoting hallo-marvin:

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(...) For me it is the first screening where everybody had a chance to see it, that would include film festivals that are open to anyone.

For me as well.

Quoting RHo:

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IMO if a film has been shown anywhere on the world for an open public, it has been released. And this date would be the release date.

Case in point: click! It's had it's theatrical run here, by now it's available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray, but still no limited or wide release in the U.S. It was shown at Sundance, however. So what's the production year?

Quoting VirusPil:

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2010. (All releases in 2009 were Festivals.)

You think so? Every single profile for this film in the database has the production year listed as 2009, though... 

Now it looks like it'll get a theatrical release in the U.S. in december. What if that's pushed back to January? Would that make the production year 2011? It'll be hard to explain that to someone who watched it at his local cinema in February 2010 and bought the DVD a couple of months later...

Mind you: as far as the country of origin is concerned, "all releases in 2010 were Festivals", too - so far, at least.

Quoting RHo:

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Quoting hallo-marvin:

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(...) For me it is the first screening where everybody had a chance to see it, that would include film festivals that are open to anyone.

For me as well.

This was how I always interpeted the rule, more of first public display/availibility. I will switch to first general release if that's what it's supposed to be.

I've always taken the year to be the first year Joe Public could just walk into a cinema and see the film. This Butt-Numb-A-Thon doesn't sound like it's open to the general public so wouldn't be counted for our purposes.