Movies starring well-known actors — even past-prime, Oscar-winning stars — get sent straight to DVD fairly frequently. Still, the fate of Hurricane Season is surprising.

The movie set, set in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, stars Forrest Whitaker, Taraji Henson and the rapper Lil Wayne. Whitaker won an Oscar only three years ago for his starring role as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Henson was nominated just last year for her supporting role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Tim Story, the director, isn't likely ever to win anything of significance for his directing work, but he did an admirable job with Barbershop (2005) and blasted off into the big leagues with Fantastic Four and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The two comic book pics had a combined worldwide gross of $620 million.

So he steps away from the comic books and makes a film about real people that has an outstanding cast, a poignant backdrop and even a sports theme...and it goes straight to DVD?

The Weinstein Company slipped it quietly into video stores last month, according to the Los Angeles Times. The studio wanted it kept so quiet that when a reporter from the Times called last week to ask when it would be released into theaters (it was supposed to come out last year), the reporter was told that no hard release date had been set yet.

Whitaker plays a real-life a high school basketball coach in Marrero, La., who leads a team of players who all had been displaced a year earlier by Katrina and leads them on a path to the state championship.