Throw Out The Old Schedule
Hollywood studios have a funny habit of thinking that if one film becomes a stunning success after opening on an obscure release date, they should position future films to open in that time slot. When 300 broke March records in 2007, Warner Bros. moved action-oriented titles, like Watchmen and 10,000 B.C., to that early point in the year. Similarly, when The Dark Knight broke opening weekend records in mid-July, studios started to shift titles that had been reserved for earlier in the summer to a period where audiences were sparer.
Interestingly, the three biggest moneymakers of 2014 thus far were released on the first weekends of February, April and August – three months atypically referred to as big moviegoing months. Usually, the biggest sessions of the season are over the first weekend in May, Memorial Day weekend and the Independence Day weekend. Well, the summer kicked off with a far from spectacular result for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and none of the Independence Day openers managed to make much of a dent in theaters.
If you want to release a ton of big movies in May, it will be hard for many of them to break out because competition is so intense. While Warner Bros. and Disney keep slotting their comic-book properties for tentpole dates in May, July and November, studios should be taking risks on atypical dates. Guardians of the Galaxy, The LEGO Movie and Captain America: The Winter Soldier would not have made as much in a May or June slot, as they would have needed to share screens with a lot of other titles catering to the needs of the same audience. With unorthodox release dates, making them one of the sole event films in the market, there was added anticipation and excitement. As a result, these blockbusters exploded at the box office. It is a good thing that more major releases are breaking records out-of-season, as they are only giving moviegoers more time to see the films they want.