Release Dates: A Blink Is Not A Flinch

It should come as no surprise, but tongues were wagging throughout the fan community yesterday with the announcement that after a lengthy stare-down over a shared May 2016 opening date, Warner Brothers blinked, leaving May for rival Marvel Studios' Captain America 3 (“The Torch of Freedom,” or whatever they end up calling it), moving their Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice up two months to the earlier frame of March 2016.

 

Now I know that a lot of folks are gunning for this picture to fail. They hate the idea of Ben Affleck, there are too many characters, Jesse Eisenberg, etc. - plus, it's a tall order for Warners to try and replicate the insane success of Marvel Studios - to make The Justice League their Avengers - but you have to admire their chutzpah for taking a shot. It's a gamble, but then so is everything.

This is actually a pretty savvy move on the part of Warner Brothers. Summer weekends can get awfully crowded - and remember, Captain America: The Winter Soldier opened in early April, which paid off huge - so Warner's is emulating Marvel yet again. More and more, studios are seeing that moving outside of the conventional summer or holiday release schedule can reap big rewards. Just look at Gravity and The Lego Movie. By getting the two-month jump on Marvel, Dawn of Justice gets a taste of Easter and spring break, which made great openings for Alice in Wonderland and The Hunger Games. 

All this dancing for a 2016 release sounds crazy, I admit. But this is the landscape we're heading into. With both Marvel and Warners planning multiple tiered "Phase 2 and 3" strategies, each composed of four or five movies, claiming your campsite well in advance is going to be nothing short of box office Darwinism - and would you rather go camping over the Fourth of July, or maybe sneak outdoors a little earlier, and enjoy that many more marshmallows apart from the crowd?