Julia Roberts, Jacob Tremblay drama Wonder pushed back to holiday season

Commercial hits from the 2016 holiday season are finally cooling down at the domestic box office, and this year's crop of mainstream crowd-pleasers is shaping up right behind them.

Lionsgate announced Monday it has moved the release date for its Julia Roberts/Jacob Tremblay vehicle Wonder from April 7 to the family-friendly Nov. 17 slot. Sources tell EW the film's positive testing with families fueled the decision.

Wonder now opens wide against Warner Bros.' heavily anticipated superhero flick Justice League — six days before the traditionally lucrative Thanksgiving box office window.

The film, based on R.J. Palacio's 2012 novel of the same name, follows a young boy (Tremblay) born with a facial deformity as he attempts to fit in at a new school. Roberts will play the boy's mother.

Homeland's Mandy Patinkin costars alongside Owen Wilson, Hamilton's Daveed Diggs, and three-time Golden Globe nominee Sonia Braga, who wowed critics on the 2016 festival road with her leading turn in Kleber Mendonça Filho's drama Aquarius. The Perks of Being a Wallflower filmmaker Stephen Chbosky is directing from a script written by Steve Conrad (The Pursuit of Happyness) and Jack Thorne (Skins).

The distributor is in the thick of the current awards race as the Damien Chazelle musical La La Land, released under Lionsgate's Summit Entertainment subsidiary, continues to dominate on the precursor circuit. The film has won top awards from major industry guilds thus far, and on Sunday, it won five additional accolades from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts — a group that shares heavy crossover membership with the Academy.