As far as Nicholas Tabarrok is concerned, the timing for the release of Defendor couldn’t be better.

The superhero movie from Vancouver director Peter Stebbings features Woody Harrelson in the titular role at a time when the actor’s profile is high, thanks to an Oscar-nominated role in The Messenger and the recent release of the well-received horror comedy Zombieland. (The Oscars will be handed out March 7.)

‘He’s getting more attention now than ever,’ says Tabarrok, who produces through his prodco Darius Films (Coopers’ Camera, Weirdsville).

Still, Alliance Films is starting small on the low-budget comedy drama, which opens Friday on one screen each in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary, while an expansion next week is hinged upon weekend box-office earnings. Harrelson plays a delusional man who thinks he’s a superhero, while Kat Dennings (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) portrays a street kid he befriends. Sandra Oh plays his psychiatrist.

To reach the ‘nerd-geek or fanboy’ target audience, Tabarrok says they turned to Toronto’s Transmitter Media to conduct a social marketing and online blitz, targeting sites like Facebook and Twitter, while Defendor‘s trailer was also on the cover page of YouTube.

‘We felt that with the nature of this film and the comic book aspect, that online media might be a specific place to target,’ he explains, noting that reviews from male-targeted news and entertainment sites such as CraveOnline and JoBlo.com have been very favorable.

The film has ‘more heart and underdog courage than any caped crusader you’ve ever seen before,’ writes Crave, while JoBlo agrees that Defendor is the ‘ultimate underdog story.’ Reviews out of TIFF, where the film premiered, were also positive.

Defendor opens next week in Los Angeles via Sony Pictures.

The weekend will see only one new Hollywood release, Martin Scorsese’s 1950s-set thriller Shutter Island, starring frequent collaborator Leonardo DiCaprio as a U.S. Marshall who searches for a murderer on a remote island. It opens on a reported 2,500 North American screens via Paramount Pictures.

Also opening on Friday:

• Mongrel Media has the acclaimed British drama Fish Tank, a coming-of-age story about a teen’s struggle to deal with her mother’s new boyfriend. Director Andrea Arnold’s sophomore film, which nabbed a jury prize at Cannes last year, will play at Toronto’s Cumberland theater.

• The Belgian animated feature A Town Called Panic — the first stop-motion animated feature selected to Cannes, where it debuted last year — bows at Toronto’s AMC Dundas Square through Films We Like. The story follows a topsy-turvy world populated by plastic figurines of cowboys, Indians, farmers, horses and cows.