Jon Favreau isn't the only one haunted by release dates these days, though the execs polled recently by Claudia Eller and Josh Friedman aren't necessarily worried about having less than two years to write all the product placement into Iron Man 2. No, their fears hinge on the surplus of new releases reaching theaters annually — 517 titles in 2007 by the authors' counts (most others put it above 600), up 49 percent from '06. And while the glut has been essentially played out elsewhere, it is kind of rare to see such a studio-friendly perspective on the "crisis," even from the pushovers at the LAT; after all, it's the specialty labels of the world — your Warner Independents, not your Warner Bros. — really battling for life in the cluttered market.