Box Office Logic
The Summer Box Office is upon us even though summer hasn't even begun yet. Studios have been moving up the release dates for most of their films and in the last few years, May has become the blockbuster month. This year would seem to follow suit with Indiana Jones opening in the last week of May and Prince Caspian opening the week before (with Iron Man and Speed Racer taking up the first two weekends).
The one thing that seems odd to me is that opening up the summer films early basically negates the whole supposed strength of the summer season. The going logic is that summer is a better time to open films because kids aren't in school. But since these films are now opening while kids are still in class, wouldn't that seem to say that blockbusters don't require an absence of pencils, books, and teacher's dirty looks?
As usual, this summer is packed to the gills with films. And, as usual, May is the beginning of the film season. The first four months of the year are basically empty. Wouldn't it make more sense to move some of these films that are going to be lost in the summer to the beginning of the year? Personally, I see The Love Guru and Get Smart as struggling to find their place in the summer slate but they would have been the best thing in the beginning of the year. If braindead crap like 10,000 BC and Meet the Spartans can make solid money in February and March, imagine how much cash Mike Myers could bring in.
Still, it seems like Hollywood has convined themselves that films must stay in season so we're probably going to be stuck with the typical set-up for 4 months, blockbusters for 4 months, leftovers for 4 months, and Oscar bait (with a few blockbuster films tossed in) for 4 months. In Hollywood, the most common sense usually lacks common sense.
