Sully premiered at the 43rd Annual Telluride Film Festival on September 2, 2016 and was released in the United States in conventional and IMAX theaters on September 9, 2016 by Warner Bros.[20] When deciding where to release the film on the 2016 release calendar, Warner Bros. executives began circling the first weekend after Labor Day considering most adult fall dramas don't begin opening until later in September or October, after summer. However, this would mean that the film's release would have to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Warner Bros. executives grew wary and spent a lot of time thinking if the release date would hurt the film's box office opening performance since the film contains a dream sequence in which the plane crashed into Manhattan skyscrapers (almost similar to the planes that crashed the World Trade Center). But Warner Bros. domestic distribution chief Jeff Goldstein and his team nevertheless decided to release the film in that corner because "Sully is a story of hope and a real hero who did his job."[21] According to the film's screenwriter, Todd Komarnicki, however, the release date was coincidental rather than pre-planned and attributed it to the box-office logistics due mainly to limited availability of securing IMAX screens, since such screens usually get booked by tent-pole films in the summer and by Star Wars films during Christmas time, with reference being made to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story which is set to open in December 2016.[22]