Three weeks after the deadly terrorist attacks, images of the World Trade Center apparently remain a sensitive subject for movie studios.

Serendipity, which is largely set in the Big Apple, originally included a skyline shot with the twin towers during the title credits. But the sequence won’t be in the John Cusack/Kate Beckinsale romantic comedy when Miramax Films releases it in 1,500-plus theaters on Oct. 5.

"We substituted one camera angle for another," Matthew Hiltzik, a New York-based spokesman for Miramax, said on Oct. 1. "We substituted an angle without the trade center in the background for one that had it."

The reasoning, he added, was simple: "Since we’re still only a few weeks from the tragedy, we’d rather err on the side of sensitivity."

Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein took it a step farther in a Sept. 27 interview with The Guardian in Britain. "What people are feeling is this: We don’t want to be reminded in our entertainment of the disaster we went through."

The late Serendipity edit was not the first such change as the movie industry tries to regain its footing in still uncertain times. Images of the twin towers were digitally removed from the Ben Stiller fashion industry spoof Zoolander, which opened Sept. 28.

Variety film critic Todd McCarthy railed against the practice of deleting images of the New York landmark from post-Sept. 11 releases.

"Not so outstanding is the decision to matte out or otherwise obscure the late World Trade Center from shots that should have included the twin towers," McCarthy wrote in his Zoolander review. "Deletion of the towers from the picture is infinitely more disruptive, not to mention insulting, than leaving them in."

Delaying for a second time the release of Serendipity, Hiltzik said, was not in the plans. The movie, featured last spring in trailers showing with Bridget Jones’s Diary, was originally set for an Aug. 17 debut. In June, the release was pushed back to Oct. 5.