With Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter already a distant memory, it’s time to turn our attention to that other Abraham Lincoln film – you know, the real one? The one directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis (and approximately ten thousand others) and based on a bestseller by an actual Pulitzer Prize-winning historian? Yeah, that one.

DreamWorks Pictures has now set a release date for their Lincoln, and the clear awards-bait production is hitting screens a tad earlier than we’d previously suspected. The film will open in limited release on November 9, which it will follow with a nationwide expansion on November 16.

The film’s limited release date will pit it against both Skyfall and Anna Karenina, also opening on that Friday, and its nationwide release will coincide with two films that probably won’t stand as much direct competition – The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 and the limited release Cannes film Rust and Bone. The following week really kicks off the holiday movie-going season, with November 21 (the day before Thanksgiving) seeing the release of Life of Pi, Parental Guidance, Red Dawn, Rise of the Guardians, and Silver Linings Playbook. When you look at that list, DreamWorks’ decision to date the film on the early side seems like a wise one, giving it plenty of time to get in front of audience eyeballs before the holidays and the rest of the tentpole pack.

The film also stars Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Hal Holbrook, James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, Bruce McGill, Joseph Cross, David Costabile, Byron Jennings, Dakin Matthews, Boris McGiver, Gloria Reuben, Jeremy Strong, David Warshofsky, David Strathairn, Walton Goggins, Lee Pace, Jackie Earle Haley, David Oyelowo, and Jared Harris.