Paramount has decided to save a lot of money — and perhaps punish the departing DreamWorks — by pushing “The Soloist” with Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx out of a planned Nov. 21 opening into March instead (they claim it’s a commercial picture that would get lost in the Thanksgiving glut, an assertion which has been greeted with the usual skepticism in the blogosphere). The studio also scrapped the planning Dec. 12 opening of “Defiance” — it would have gone virtually head-to-head with another Holocaust drama slotted for that week, The Weinsteins’ “The Reader” — and instead “Definance,” starring Daniel Craig have only an Oscar-qualification run at the end of the month after it, like “The Soloist,” bows at the AFI Fest. But it’s clear Paramount will be focusing its Oscar campaigns and money on the starry “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Revolutionary Road,” both coming Christmas week, the latter technically from the downsized Paramount Vantage. Meanwhile, the Weinsteins, who keep denying they’re having cash-flow problems, have scrapped the November opening of “The Road” and are saying it may or may not open in December. The studio also quietly scrapped the Christmas Day opening of the sports drama “Hurricane Season” with Forrest Whitaker, which was to have been the Brothers’ final movie distributed through MGM. It’s unclear if this is about money, the flop of the sports drama “The Express” (despite an endorsement by Harvey at The Daily Beast) or both.