IT’S A DATE, OR IS IT?

Profit-hungry studios push movie releases back and forth, timing them for maximum impact

Profit-hungry studios push movie releases back and forth, timing them for maximum impact
Fans of Harry Potter are seething. Twilight devotees are in a state of giddy rapture. And Will Ferrell’s getting nervous. All because Warner Bros. decided last week that they needed one more blockbuster for the summer of 2009. And pushed back Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from its long-planned November 21 release date to July 17, 2009.
Driven by greed, hype and hope, the business of exactly when to release a movie can seem inscrutable to outsiders. With Prince decamped to 2009, Summit Entertainment decided to move Twilight—the first film based on Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling vampire romances, a movie awaited by mostly young, mostly female, mostly panting readers—to November 21.

That lets 20th Century Fox’s big-budget The Day the Earth Stood Still, starring Keanu Reeves, have December 12 all to itself. Good news for Reeves, bad news for Ferrell, whose 2009 summer blockbuster Land of the Lost is now in a July 17 stare-down with Harry Potter.
Why this insane chess game? In a word: Profits. The decision to move Half-Blood Prince came because Warners looked to the future and saw the ravages of the past. The 2007 writer’s strike had left the studio’s summer 2009 slate lacking a “tentpole”—a big event picture that can drive the planning, spending, and strategic release patterns of the company’s entire output.

The uprooting of Half-Blood Prince was sudden and unexpected: it left the studio’s corporate cousin, Entertainment Weekly, with a Harry Potter-themed fall preview issue on newsstands and serious egg on its face.
The strange case of the Tom Cruise drama Valkyrie offers an example of how an unreleased movie can rise and fall on the whims of buzz. A World War II movie about a Nazi officer who led an unsuccessful plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the film was originally scheduled to open August 8. Then it bounced to June 28 where it was up against competition in WALL-E and Wanted. A sense that Valkyrie might have Oscar potential resulted in a shift to October 3. Then the film got moved to February 13, 2009. And the day Tropic Thunder was released to rave reviews for Cruise’s stealth role as a Hollywood producer, Valkyrie was moved again—to December 26, 2008. With the star back in moviegoers’ good graces, the studio hopes to piggyback on the warm fuzzies.

Occasionally two studios will engage in a stare-down with similar movies on the same date. This is almost always a bad idea for the worse of the two. Warner’s Get Smart with Steve Carell and Paramount’s The Love Guru with Mike Myers were scheduled for a June 20 release. When reviews savaged the Myers comedy, Get Smart benefited. On the other hand, Universal’s decision to launch Mamma Mia! directly into the teeth of The Dark Knight on July 18 proved to be a brilliant stroke of counter-programming that gave older female audiences something to watch while the rest of the family lined up for Batman.
With the unparalleled glut of movies—512 in 2007—and all the bluffing and sword-rattling, all studios must find a date for all movies. Just as long as it’s not November 19, 2010. That’s when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I is slated to open.
TY BURR, NYT