Earlier on we reported on the announcement that Warner Brothers had a release schedule of it’s cinematic DC world between now and 2020. Dates included but with no film titles. To kick off proceedings with its competitor Marvel, Warner Brothers shifted its Batman v Superman release date from what would have been a toe to toe heavyweight match with Captain America 3 to March 2016.
Dan Feelman who is the Warner Brothers Head of Distribution talks us through the strategy behind moving the release date of ‘Dawn of Justice’.
The reality now is there really isn’t a bad week to open a movie. If you look at the summer box office this year, you can see that there were so many movies, one after the other. You can start with Spider-Man two weeks later Godzilla, and then Maleficent, and then Edge of Tomorrow, and then Jump Street and Transformers. And the one thing they all had in common, not one of them did over $250 million. We’ll be the first one up [in 2016], which is very important, and we’ll have six weeks before Captain America comes in.
2014 is a solid case study to perform an analysis on given that the Lego Movie and Captain America 2 were (and currently are) the biggest movies of the year.If we put Transformers aside, there hasn’t been another movie this year that has opened opened like what Captain America did. Oh wait, yes there is it’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Another Marvel creation (August release).
With Zack Snyder now releasing Batman v Superman in March 2016, this will be his fifth film to be released in that month and he has had good success in the past with the same release window.
2007: 300 opened at a whopping 71 million
2009: Watchmen opened at a solid 55 million
2012: Hunger Games made 400 Million
All in March – we can see the trend.
Fellman also said that we expect some film titles against those release dates soon. Expect Justice League to be the next film after BvS.
“While it hasn’t been officially announced… I think it’s a pretty good bet.”
Source: cinemablend
