I don’t have a specific issue to complain about, but movie distro schedules seems rather random. Iron Man 3 opens a week later in the US than in England, China, and Korea. I’m not saying I want them to get it later, but I’m really wondering how it can possibly be that we couldn’t open it domestically at the same time. Hell, it should use the exact digital data as the England version, so… why?
Sometimes there’s another big release in the US that weekend and they don’t wanna have to compete
Possibly…though, in this case, that doesn’t seem to be the situation. The “big” releases in the U.S. this week are “Pain and Gain”, “Mud”, and “The Big Wedding” (yeah, I hadn’t heard of any of the three before this week, either).
It probably has nothing to do with technological limitations; it’s likely a marketing decision. I’ve heard that the studios open movies earlier in China now to get a jump on the media pirates, but I’m not sure how true that is.
We were talking about this at dinner the other night.
First up, piracy concerns might be greater with certain markets.
I don’t think it’s the case so much with movies like Iron Man 3, but releasing out of the US first can be an anti-bomb strategy. The reasoning goes that the US is a major and influential market, if a movie bombs in the US before it gets to a country, it’ll probably bomb there too. Maybe the studio can adjust the marketing prior to US release or something, or maybe audiences aren’t swayed so much by “it bombed in Denmark”. I remember John Carter was used as an example of a film that tanked worldwide after appearing in the US first, while Battleship did well with a late US release.
So, after I already yakked on about it, I did a search, and the articles I turned up said about the same thing, plus local scheduling concerns. That makes sense in the case of the Australian release date for Iron Man 3: it coincided with a public holiday.
The CNN blog says that the overseas market is simply more lucrative than the US market-- well, duh, yeah, it’s a lot bigger if you look at it as the whole world vs one country-- but also says that good performance in other countries will hopefully boost domestic box office. The Yahoo one says about the same but points out that John Carter did OK overseas despite tanking domestically.
I’d think if piracy was a concern, the obvious thing would be to make sure it was released at the same time everywhere. That would at least minimize the case of people pirating a movie because they’re impatient.
I’ve been seeing previews for all three for weeks, but Mud is the only one that interests me, because it was written and directed by Jeff Nichols, who wrote and directed a fantastic movie last year called Take Shelter, with Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain. I’ve had to suffer through the previews of The Big Wedding, which looks über-horrible. The other one is a maybe, but very low priority.
Pain and Gain is trending pretty good. Of all things, it’s a dark comedy about the absurdity of a (real-life) criminal situation and the losers who started it, with some sour looks at the sleazier aspects of Miami. And it’s from Michael Bay of all people.
Just a very weird idea, but maybe a good one.
It got on my list because I like Mark W. It got taken off my list because of Bay. It got put back on the list because of the surprisingly good reviews. It’s mainly low priority because there are a lot of movies in front of I want/need to see so I know I won’t get to it until it hits the discount theaters. Your post upped the priority a bit though.
I love being surprised by low priority movies. I never would have expected that my favorite movie of 2013 (so far) would be what had been a VERY low-priority movie called Spring Breakers (wait, what?) by Harmony Korine (wait, WHAT???).
There are things about Iron Man 3 that could bog it down in a US release. It’s a sequel, and the prior installation sold less than what was hoped for. Comic book movies either hit big or miss big (Green Lantern, anybody? Punisher?) and this one stars a fifty-ish actor with a lot of the same pros and cons as Tom Cruise and Charlie Sheen.
In Asia, no one gives a crap about any of these factors and it’s guaranteed to make money hand over fist. Hell, it might make back its production costs in Korea alone before opening in the States. John Carter was a pretty big hit here for the same studio. Why NOT open in Korea first? And in China, they barely track sequels; Judge Dredd was billed as a sequel to Demolition Man. China is the perfect place to dump a superhero sequel you have doubts about.
Australia is getting Star Trek Into Darkness early too.
For a long time “Summer” didn’t start until Memorial Day Weekend. Summer got streached up to the first weekend in May.
Distributors, look at how much films gross and when. (there is actually huge database of this) In the US, a film opening on the first weekend of May has historically grossed more then a film that has opened the last week of April.
I was surprised that Oblivion, a huge budget sci-fi film starring Tom (Freaking) Cruise opened in April.
I read an article on this that I cannot find at the moment but the reason is piracy. When movies opened here first they would flood overseas, especially China. Generally Americans buy less pirated stuff so they make more in the long run by releasing first in other countries and then here.
None of those apply to Iron Man 3. Number two made less than the first, true, but it was only a few million. Effectively, they were equally popular. Comic book movies can fail, but neither Iron Man movie has and the Marvel movieverse (note: this doesn’t include Punisher or Spider-Man for that matter) as a whole is huge.
And Robert Downey Jr is beloved by everybody. His presence is what made Iron Man a hit in the first place.
The big overarching reason that movies, even ones that would seem to be American by virtue of the actors, writers, directors, settings, themes, etc., now often get released abroad first is globalization. There was a period within the lifetime of the posters here when American film distributors didn’t think much about foreign sales. They knew that these films would be distributed abroad, but they didn’t think of those sales as a major part of their profits. Maybe the foreign ticket sales would be half of the domestic ticket sales. They often didn’t even make much of an attempt to maximize that part of the business, just selling the distribution rights to companies abroad. Nearly all the actors were American-born, and those that weren’t were ones who had come to the U.S. to stay. American movies were set in the U.S., and those few which weren’t were often about Americans abroad and were written by Americans.
Things have changed quite a bit over the past two generations or so. Most films distributors think of themselves as international companies, not American ones, regardless of the movies they make. They expect the foreign ticket sales to be more like twice the domestic ones. The actors come from everywhere and know how to do accents so well that it’s usually impossible to know where they really come from unless you look it up. The film distributors now have finely honed instincts about what sort of film will do best in what country, and they will open the film there so that they will get the best word of mouth and the best reviews from the start.
Also, there was The Avengers in-between, and that was a spectacular hit.
Yeah, but China is probably the single worst nest of pirates around. That only makes sense if you assume that people who pirate would see it in theaters, and that they’ll somehow decide not to if it’s released there first. I’m not sure either makes sense.
I’m still trying to unboggle my mind over the fact that someone compared RDJ with Tom Cruise and…Charlie Sheen?? The knots in my brain, they hurt.
Yeah, a camcorder version of Iron Man 3 is already online. Simultaneous release is what a lot of movies have done in the past.
I think a good case can be made that Downey Jr. is currently the biggest movie star in the world.
Apparently they do see it in theaters or they wouldn’t still be releasing them overseas first.