We are just around the corner from the summer movie season. Soon comes Memorial day and the blockbusters will start flowing like wine through the streets or something.

Wait a minute, you are noting, we’ve already had two enormous worldwide movies this month, SPIDER-MAN III AND SHREK THE THIRD. Thanks for noting this. Now shut up and listen; these movies don’t count. They’re part of a release phenomenon that I call the early May dump.

I used to run movie theatres, for a long long time. And after a while you notice patterns. Twice a year, in January and early May, the studios would roll out pricey movies with big names. They would open big, then fizzle out. It makes sense. The studio has a big movie on its hands, but they don’t have a lot of confidence in it. They think, if we release this when there are other big movies out, it’ll get eaten alive. The best times to release blockbusters are in that month between Thanksgiving and New Years Day, and during the summer, because people have more leisure time on their hands. So if you have a weak competitor you release outside those times, when the pool is empty.

The downside of releasing in early May is that you are limiting your earning potential. Your movie is going to play well until the holiday weekend, when it will be swept out of theatres by movies that WILL compete. So however you promote, you’re only going to get a few weeks of real business. This brings us to Spider-Man III.

I know, it has broken records. It opened huge, then had a huge second weekend. But that 2nd was down 60% from the opening. And I think Sony knew this was coming. So they released their tentpole before a bunch of other tents came out. They knew that however presold that opening would be, this one didn’t have the drawing power of the first two.

SHREK is an even better example, because Dreamworks didn’t even have the confidence to release a kid’s movie after school was out for summer. Look for it to plummet into the drink with the release of Pirates of the Carribbean this Thursday. And what happens this Thursday? The start of the long, long, Memorial Day Weekend. And then, the real season begins.

All this comes by way of reminding you that next January, when they release a movie with talented older actors in a story of serious weighty import, that it’s too late for that movie to get nominated for an Academy Award. And next May, when they put out a sequel to something you loved, that sequel probably sucks. It’s a powerful tool of prediction. Amaze your friends. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 3:30 am and is filed under General, Marketing, Motion Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.