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The plot's similar -- maybe too similar -- to real life

A promising young graduate student enters a university lecture hall and opens fire, shooting fleeing students and executing one at close range.

This might sound like the deadly Valentine's Day massacre on the campus of Northern Illinois University, but it's actually the plot of a new movie called "Dark Matter," starring Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep and directed by Chen Shi-Zheng.

Joe Braier, director of marketing operations at American Sterling Productions (producer of "Dark Matter"), said Friday there are no plans to change the April opening dates for "Dark Matter." New York will get the movie April 11; other markets April 15.

In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Hollywood studios postponed several movies with disaster themes, especially Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Collateral Damage."

"Dark Matter" concerns a brilliant Chinese doctoral candidate whose hopes become crushed by a jealous mentor in the cosmology department at an unnamed western university.

The movie, an award-winner at the Sundance Film Festival, had already been bumped from release last year when a gunman went on a rampage at Virginia Tech.

"Dark Matter" is based on a 1991 shooting spree at the University of Iowa that killed five people.

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