There's been a few items on these topics I've thought of lately.
Every week I get a list of new and changed release dates for various films. Most are setting definite release dates for movies that so far were just fall 07 etc. Some films get moved around to compete with or avoid other films. Right now there's 2 huge movies slated for Memorial Day 2009 so one of them will have to move.
Sometimes films are pushed back because they aren't finished yet or moved to a dead time of year because they suck.
Some films move around quite a bit, Sunshine was supposed to come out in March, which it did in the rest of the world. It was moved to September, now is opening July 20th.
Then there's the odd little changes, in the next couple months both Harry Potter and Die Hard were moved up a day. This seems odd to do this so close to the release date. Especially with all the attention paid to the grosses in the first few days. I'm not sure about Die Hard but I know Harry Potter has the old release date on its' posters etc. They are probably going to try to make the grosses for the weekend seem higher by opening early. Maybe they want to break one of the arcane records such as highest 5 days gross including midnight shows Tuesday.
Most people don't realize the decision whether to play midnight shows of big movies on Thursday night isn't entirely up to the theatres. Each studio decides if midnight shows can be done.
Sony allowed midnight shows for Spider-Man 3 and pretty much every theatre in London did one. Warner allowed midnight shows for Ocean's Thirteen but Rainbow was the only to do it as far as I know.
Fox said there could be no midnight shows for Fantastic Four 2. That was my first clue it wasn't going to be as good as I hoped. Not allowing midnight shows probably meant they didn't want negative word of mouth spreading too early to affect the first weekend grosses.
One thing happened Saturday I haven't seen for a while. Disney did public previews of Rattatoille in most cities including a couple theatres in London. If you went at 7pm on Saturday you could pay the normal price and see it. This used to be common practice to spread (hopefully) good word of mouth in advance of the official opening weekend. I haven't seen this done in a while. I had assumed because of piracy issues and with so much attention on the opening weekend now it's also risky to take a chance on any bad worth of mouth spreading. Disney must have a lot of faith in this movie to chance doing preview screenings.
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