In this edition of Cinema Issue we are talking about release strategy and how Hollywood cannot seem to get out of its own way. Back a few decades ago films would come out on the same weekend and compete, this became less and less done and studio executives became more and more skittish.
Now you have things like films with very similar premises such as Ready or Not and They Will Kill You coming out a week apart. This is not a return to direct facing off, in that they are coming out on the same weekend, which at least has free market merit, this is release date stupidly. By spacing out the films by a week the latter will suffer at the box office as people are not going to want to see a film very similar to Ready or Not a week later. Ultimately it should have either come out alongside it at the same time, if they have confidence in it, or moved to a different release date.
This is but one example of this trend you can see studios doing things like this all the time sometimes cannibalising their own films. For example next spring/summer Disney are going to release the live action remake of Lilo and Stitch 2 at the end of May and then the third Incredibles film in the middle of June. This gives their own Lilo and Stitch about 2 weeks before it will have its marketshare eaten into by Incredibles 3 and is just stupid. If rival studios want to challenge each other that’s business but if studios are committing acts of self harm to their own release slates that stupidity.
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