'Valerian' image courtesy of EuropaCorp
I mentioned a few weeks ago that the upcoming summer season was a little weirdly spaced out regarding tentpole scheduling and it just got a little weirder and (amazingly) even more spaced out.
20th Century Fox made a bunch of moves yesterday, including possibly dating Avatar 2 for Dec 21, 2018 (“Untitled Fox/Lightstorm Entertainment Film”) and planting a flag for two Fox/Marvel movies (11/02/18 and 02/14/19) which are presumably Deadpool 2 and something else we can all speculate about. But they shifted their two big summer offerings as well, moving Kingsman: The Golden Circle from June 16 to Oct. 06. and moving Alien: Covenant from Aug. 4 to May 19.
That last one got the most attention since they had a teaser poster to go along with it. But the shifting of Matthew Vaughn’s action sequel is not a small thing. First, it puts it right on top of Blade Runner 2049 and Lionsgate’s My Little Pony animated film. It was initially scheduled to debut alongside Pixar’s Cars 3. On the one hand, that was perfect scheduling, as there is a long history of adult-skewing genre fare (Live Free or Die Hard, Wanted, Bad Teacher, World War Z, Central Intelligence) thriving alongside Pixar summer releases.
On the other hand, late May/early June is going to be rough, with Alien: Covenant leading into Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, leading into Wonder Woman, leading into Universal/Comcast Corp.'s The Mummy. Speaking of which, the big date change was Fox moving their sixth Alien movie (eighth if you count the Alien vs. Predator films) into the heart of May.
That means that the May 19 weekend is now really crowded, with Annabelle 2, the Dwayne Johnson/Zac Efron Baywatch adaptation, The Nut Job 2 and Fox’s own Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul all looking at that June 16 date or that Aug 4 slot and considering making the jump. The good news is that this means Fox is confident about their Alien movie. The pre-Memorial Day weekend (all four Shrek films, all three Star Wars prequels, The Matrix Reloaded, Pitch Perfect 2, etc.) is one of the best frames of the summer since you get to avoid a second-weekend slump thanks to the holiday.
On the other hand, they just walked away from what may be the new “best slot of the summer” date. As we’ve seen over the last several years, that first weekend in August date can give you exceptionally long legs as the proverbial “last big movie of the summer.” Going way back to 1993 with The Fugitive and continuing up through recent history with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Suicide Squad, the “last biggie of the summer” can be a huge advantage.
Those films all enjoyed uncommonly leggy runs over the last few years. The Fugitive was the summer’s second-biggest grossing movie behind Jurassic Park, while Guardians of the Galaxy was the top domestic grosser of summer 2014 and is still the MCU’s leggiest movie. And Suicide Squad pulled a record-high $133 million weekend, had a horrific 67% second-weekend drop and still legged it to $325m (a 2.44x multiplier) partially by being the last biggie of the season and having the board to itself for over a month.
Especially now that Warner Bros./Time Warner no longer regularly uses the mid-to-late July slot for their mega movie (Harry Potter parts 5, 6, and 8, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, etc.) like they once did, that early August slot can be a goldmine for the right blockbuster-y movie, and now it’s empty. If I’m EuropaCorp looking at the relatively positive reception of the first Valerian: The City of a Thousand Planets trailer, I’m seriously considering whether my movie is good enough to take a shot at being the “last big blockbuster of the summer.”
As it stands, the Luc Besson sci-fi spectacle is opening on July 21, against Chris Nolan’s Dunkirk. First, that’s two of the biggest “not banking on franchise awareness or nostalgia” summer releases both opening on the same day. Second, all due respect, but Nolan’s film (which, yes, is Warner Bros. using that slot to launch one of their two summer biggies) is the one that’s going to get all the press that week, especially if it ends up opening two days early in 70mm auditoriums.
If Valerian is any good, it can take the now relatively empty Aug 4 slot in an entirely tentpole-free August schedule and position itself in two ways. It can take a shot at being the last big movie of the summer. It can position itself as “the one you’ve been waiting for” provided many the “big” summer releases underwhelm critically or commercially. This was a big help to Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers (which hit pay dirt over July 4th weekend in 2007 after a weak June and a bunch of audience dis-pleasing threequels), Inception, Guardians of the Galaxy, and, reviews notwithstanding, Suicide Squad.
It will also better position itself as an “original” (yes, it’s based on a French comic book, but to most domestic audiences it will be a new thing) summer blockbuster in a sea of sequels and reboots. It’s already the year’s biggest ($180 million) “new to cinemas” franchise, so it might want to consider a new way to position itself away from the pack.
So, Alien: Covenant is now positioning itself as the big “pre-Memorial Day” geek-friendly tentpole, and I imagine one of the other four releases will take a flight to safer waters (to say nothing of Sony’s original sci-fi thriller Life opening a week later). Kingsman: The Golden Circle is going from breakout summer sequel to leggy crowd-pleasing Oct. release, which is bad news for Blade Runner 2049. And the now golden “first weekend in August” slot is now free of blockbusters, as is the entire month of August.
Something is going to have to take that date, like maybe Tom Cruise's The Mummy if it wants to get out of the June crowd (Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation was accidentally one of the last biggies of summer 2015 when Fantastic Four fizzled), and we’ll see how that plays out. Oh, and something is going to open on June 16 against Cars 3. Considering how insanely crowded the pre-summer season (especially March) happens to be, summer is starting to look like "safer" than the Spring.
Oh, and Avatar 2 may have an actual, honest-to-goodness release date, but that’s for another day.
