Summer season gets some competition

By Sarah Sluis

Hollywood used to have a scheduling formula: blockbusters and tentpoles in the summer, awards films in the winter, and more blockbusters to cover the winter holidays and Easter/spring break. While the logic makes sense, it's left many moviegoers high and dry when they want to see a good film at an off time. There's nothing worse than wanting to catch a movie with a friend in late January, only to be faced with stale awards fare or some unappealing horror film or teen comedy.

However, just as television stations colonized the rerun space of summer a few years back, studios are looking hard at the recent succeses of "off-time" movies that opened, like 300, Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Taken. In a model that pits quality films against quality and junk against junk, these films managed to rise above the pack, doing consistent business week after week because they were more than "just junk," they (arguably) were films that people would have seen at any time of year.

Fox is jumping on this strategy, and recently moved several of its upcoming films to these less competitive but more and more lucrative slots. Tooth Fairy, the Dwayne Johnson movie planned for a pre-Thanksgiving November 13th release in 2009, has been pushed back to January 22, 2010. Race to Witch Mountain, which Johnson recently starred in, also opened on a slightly off time, March 13 of this year, and racked up $63 million, so the studio can expect similar results.

The comedy Date Night will open on April 9, 2010, also a light time at the box office, but one that coincides with the television schedules of Tina Fey and Steve Carell--expect many commercials for the film during "30 Rock" and "The Office." In another off spot (though coming in around when some lucky students have mid-winter break), the kid fantasy adventure Percy Jackson will release on February 12th.

Like Paramount last year with Iron Man, Fox is pushing the boundaries of "summer movie season." While, like the color white, tentpoles were taboo before Memorial Day, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which has all the markers of a tentpole, will release on May 1st, weeks before the kick-off holiday. The studios's not abandoing the Memorial Day slot, as it's positioned Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian there against Terminator Salvation, but it's front-loading its films that can easily be classified as tentpoles, leaving movies like Fox Searchlight's Jennifer's Body (September 18) to finish up the summer, a time when back to school leads to a temporary drop in the box office.

For me, evenly spacing quality films will lead to more trips to the box office. While I certainly go to the movies more in the summer and the winter, it's because there are more films I want to see, not necessarily because I have more spare time. While I do have some nostalgia for childhood trips to air conditioned theatres during summer break, and seeing a special film the day after Thanksgiving, nostalgia alone does not sell movie tickets (unless we're talking about a drive-in theatre). Making movie marquees appealing year-round is an excellent decision by Fox, and one that many studios will likely follow.