Let The Summer Movie Pogrom Begin!

Friday marks the start of the Summer Movie Season, where the studios cram all of their movies that they think will make a ton of money. (It could more appropriately be called The Summer of Sequels, as the summer movie slate is composed almost entirely of sequels.) And while I understand why studios give this kind of release schedule to their blockbusters, I honestly think they could make more money by releasing them elsewhere in the year.

The poster child for this alternative release theory is Titanic, the highest-grossing movie of all time, pulling in $600 million in the U.S. alone. Titanic had an absolutely horrible release date, opening the week before Christmas, against Tomorrow Never Dies. (And Bond movies always make $100 million, regardless of their quality.) The weekend before Christmas always leads up to a short week, as movies the next week come out on Christmas Day, regardless of where it falls in the week. So, Titanic was basically set up to fail. But, it won the box office that first weekend, and proceeded to win every weekend until Summer Movie Season started.

Greatest movie ever? Hardly. (A two hour, godawful love story, followed by an hour-long sinking of the Titanic sounds like shit to me.) It won the box office every week because absolutely nothing opened against it. After 15 straight weeks at #1, the movie that knocked it from the top spot was Lost in Space. (Fucking Lost in Space. Talk about a pathetic year.) But, by that time, Titanic had already made $500 million, and nothing else came anywhere close. In fact, of the 70+ (!!) movies that came out during that time, only two made $100 million. Two. (A third, Good Will Hunting, was released before Titanic in limited release and went wide about a month later, and would go on to gross over $100 million.) As a comparison, in the following four months, more than 10 movies made over $100 million. But...that was Summer Movie Season, when all the money makers come out.

And that's how movies like Disturbia win the box office weeks in a row: there's nothing else worth watching opening against them. I enjoy watching movies in the theatre. I sometimes go to the movies just to go, if I can find something worth watching. I might go two, three times a weekend. Last weekend, I went to Hot Fuzz. Before that, Grindhouse on its opening day, 4/6. Before that, 300, a whole month going by. I'll watch anything, but I honestly don't see anything out there worth sitting through.

Yet the studios still insist on cramming all of their movies into the summer months, instead of spreading them out over the other nine. With all the shit that's come out so far this year, can you imagine how much money Spiderman 3 would have made had it come out last month? It'd be past $400 million and counting by now, instead of having basically two weeks to make all of its money before the Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean sequels cannibalize its box office. And this is the way things are done; makes perfect sense to me.

The only plus side to all this is that I can finally go back to the movies, as, well, it's when all the movies come out. I can't wait.