Why do studios release movies on different dates in different countries? Dr. Strange is being released a week earlier in other countries before the USA? Why? Dr. Strange is an American product first. It also gives thieves an easier opportunity to pirate the film . Didn’t Lucas release ST. Ep. 3 on the same date worldwide? This makes sense to me. But Marvel seems to constantly release their films overseas first.
One of the interesting things about Doctor Strange is that despite being released by an American company, being directed and written by Americans, and being set in the U.S., most of the main cast is British. Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, Tilda Swinton, Scott Adkins, and Zara Phythian are British. Mads Mikkelsen is Danish. Alaa Safi is French. Rachel McAdams is Canadian. Only Michael Stuhlbarg and Benjamin Bratt among the main actors are Americans.
You’re assuming that the film producers consider this to be an American movie. I think that most big film companies now consider themselves to be global distributors. They know that the American market is only one part of the market for their films. Often it’s not even the largest market. So whatever reason they used to release the film slightly earlier in some places than others, they didn’t necessarily feel that they had to please American audiences more than others. Here’s the list of release dates:
For Dr. Strange we will be the largest market. Certainly larger than Macedonia. And it still doesn’t explain why it can’t be released worldwide on the same date. I know someone who says they can download a movie that been released in another country, before its released in the US. This kind of stuff has to hurt box office receipts.
I think the OP’s question still applies. Why not release a major movie internationally on one specific date? By opening it in any market early you take risks with the audience in other markets. There’s the piracy risk the OP mentioned. And there’s the risk of opening night disappointment when a highly publicized movie doesn’t live up to its hype.
I did some searching and found this website, which explicitly says that Marvel likes to release its films outside the U.S. first:
Box Office Mojo says that this film will open on 3,800 screens. That’s a lot. I assume that the studio has to coordinate a wide release like that with the theater owners to make sure they have that many screens available. I assume that’s part of it.
Also, Doctor Strange wasn’t even mostly shot in the U.S., it appears. It was shot in studios in the U.K. and the U.S. There were location shots in China, Nepal, and the U.S.
Another example of a supposedly American film not being shot mostly in the U.S. and not mostly starring Americans is Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It was shot all around the world, and it appears that studio shooting mostly took place in the U.K. The main cast was mostly not Americans, except for Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, and Mark Hamill, who the producers didn’t have any choice about their nationality, since they were from the original cast. Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Andy Serkis, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Gwendoline Christie are British. Lupita Nyong’o is Mexican. Domhnall Gleeson is Irish. Oscar Isaac is Guatemalan. Max von Sydow is Swedish. Only Adam Driver among the main cast who are not from the earlier movies is American. (Yeah, I realize that the nationality of some of these people is complicated, since they have moved around during their life.)
Heh. Just the other day, I noticed that Ben Hur – you remember the disappointing remake of Ben Hur, right? – comes out on DVD in December.
And in January, it hits theaters in Japan.
I think a major reason for not always opening simultaneously across different markets is that they are, in fact, different markets. I’m sure you’ve read of the jockeying for position among studios as they try to ensure that their big films of the year don’t release too close in time to rival productions, diminishing opening profits. They have to do that in other countries, too, but against different films: sometimes ones that may get only a limited release (if any) outside their home market, but are hugely popular inside it.
Yes, releasing at different times in different markets increases the risk of piracy, but if you kill your movie by opening against the wrong competition, or at a time of year when no-one’s going to the movies, you’re probably going to cause more damage.
It seems whatever factors exist in one market are going to exist in all of them. If you’re worried, for example, about how your new Marvel movie is going to fare against the other studio’s new Star Trek movie, that’s going to be an issue all over the world.
I think what WotNot was saying is that there might be a big release unique to that country that the Hollywood movie may not want to compete against. For instance, on February 8, a Chinese movie called The Mermaid opened in China and Hong Kong. It’s the biggest grossing movie in China but wasn’t a big deal outside China.
On the other hand, there might be a national holiday that weekend in one country or another that means that people there are going to stay home.
That’s exactly what I’m saying, yes.
I think it may have something to do with the fact that video piracy is actually *less *prevalent in the United States than elsewhere in the world. The vast majority of the U.S. audience will not be downloading pirated versions of the movie if it’s released somewhere else first; you can’t say that about some other countries.
Lots of reasons not mentioned.
Inertia. They’ve always done it this way. Back when theaters used film, they’d move the film reels from country to country. So staggered releases got ingrained.
Timing is different in different countries. What makes a good weekend to release a film in one country might be a bad weekend in another. Not everybody has a Thanksgiving or Memorial Day weekend, you know.
It is very, very hard on actors to roam around the world plugging a movie even with staggered releases. Tom Hanks can’t appear on the big talk shows in all the countries in the world days before it’s released world wide.
Studios aren’t always in charge of overseas release issues. Sometime during filming, the producing studio may sell overseas rights to a country or a region to someone else. That person gets to make decisions about timing, number of screens, etc.
And on and on.
Note that while China is notorious for lax enforcement of IP laws, it is also becoming a major market for western films. The piracy isn’t hurting things much and in fact might be driving the desire to see western films in theaters.
I would guess that releasing a movie on the same date worldwide is a major logistical challenge. Before the movie could even be sent out to theaters around the world (itself a big undertaking) the translation and dubbing/subtitling for every language in which the movie was to be released would have to be done.
The vast majority of cinema screens worldwide are digital. It’s no longer a matter of making and shipping film prints but just a matter of downloading a file, even if it’s a fairly big one.
Look again at the list of release dates for the film:
The difference in dates of release can’t be a matter of having to wait to translate and then dub or subtitle the film. So, for instance, the release in English-language countries starts with a premiere in Los Angeles on 20 October. Then it’s released in the U.K. and Ireland on 25 October. It’s releases in Australia and New Zealand on 27 October. It’s released in Canada and the U.S. on 4 November. It was also released in India and South Africa on 4 November, but I don’t know if those releases were in English.
For Portuguese, it was released in Portugal on 27 October and in Brazil on 2 November. For Spanish, it was released in Spain and Mexico on 28 October, in Columbia and Chile on 3 November, and in Argentina on 24 November. For Chinese, it was released in Taiwan on 25 October, in Hong Kong on 26 October, in Singapore on 27 October, and in China on 4 November. For French, it was released in France and Belgium on 26 October and in Canada on 4 November.
Some of the one or two day differences may be because there are different days of the week that a movie is generally released on depending on the country. I don’t know about that. Can anyone tell me if there are such differences?
In any case, look at the link I already posted, which says that Marvel regularly releases films in other countries before releasing them in the U.S. for various reasons:
I didn’t say it was. I was offering one reason, in addition to the others already mentioned in this thread, why releasing a movie (that’s movies in general, not Doctor Strange in particular) on the same date worldwide would be challenging. Preparing multiple foreign language versions at once is possible, but it can’t be a trivial undertaking.