As others have mentioned, it’s a Monday, and Transformers is already on the 1st. And “Captain America” is a more tenuous link to July 4th than the movie Independence Day. I’d say it’s barely more appropriate than having it premiere on President’s Day. It’s not like the date has an actual meaning in the context - CA wasn’t born on July 4th or anything. Whereas ID it was the movie title, the actual date of the invasion within the plot, and also a big part of the moving speech.
While it’s slightly clever to have the date of the premiere have a special meaning, it doesn’t really have any affect on audience draw. There are a lot bigger considerations than that when it comes to picking a date. It would have taken a really clever advertising campaign to take advantage of the special date. In the end, having the special date wouldn’t have made enough extra money to offset the money it would have lost because of it.
That does refute the notion that people are too busy to see movies on holiday weekends, but if you take a closer look at the page you linked to, you’ll see (a) none of the release dates are 7/4 — they’re actually all before Independence Day), and (b) most of the days of the week those movies dropped on are actually Wednesdays (essentially extending the weekend, especially assured given that most people have the Independence Day off from work.) The other days are 1 Friday, 1 Thursday and 1 Tuesday (but only when the 4th was the very next day), and noticeably no Mondays.
There was a Nazi character in the movie 1941. But I’ve never seen it so I don’t know if John Belushi’s character confronts the Nazi character in the film.
Toy tie-ins are a huge part of this type of movie’s bottom line, and selling Red Skull figurines with little swastikas on them will be harder than they need to be; easier to go with little Hydra emblems.
A guy dressed in an American flag is a tough sell in Europe, and ancillary items with swastikas will be even harder.
Wait, this all brings up another question: why not switch the release dates of Transformers and Captain America? I mean, I’m not aware of any great July-4th theming of any transformers movies (I’m also not aware of anyone who actually cares to see the new movie, which has so little buzz I’ve heard sweatbees with more spark).
Movie toys are notoriously inaccurate. For every Batman movie, they’ll make a half dozen Batman variations, glow in the dark, giant boomerang launcher, scuba, etc – none of which appear in the film of course. I’m not arguing for Nazi toys. So switch the swastikas out for Hydras, but not in the film!
I was going to say, “because the studio which is distributing Transformers 3 has no reason to do any favors for the studio which is distributing Captain America”…and then I looked them up on IMDB, and both films are being distributed by Paramount.
Because the Transformers movie will make a guaranteed zillion dollars with or without buzz and the Captain America movie has a likely possibility of being a giant bomb. Now, which would you choose for the bigger weekend?
Captain America. If the audience for Transformers is guaranteed, then it doesn’t need the boost from a big weekend. If I’m worried that Captain America might fail, I’d open it over the long weekend, hoping to get as big an audience as possible before word of mouth kills the movie.
Is my logic wrong, though, even by Hollywood standards? My understanding is that, if the studio has a big production that they don’t think has legs, the best hope is that you get a big box office from the opening weekend, before everyone has a chance to talk about what a turkey the movie is.
That is mostly true. But it doesn’t trump the adage, “take the guaranteed money.” Your market is your stockholders, not the public. If you have an opportunity that is 99% guaranteed to rake in money, make the theater owners happy, increase attendance at other pictures (a hit tends to drive up movie going and there is a spillover effect from people who can’t get into showings), and all the other good things that go along with a $100 million opening weekend, then you take it. It’s also become more usual to open movies in other countries on the same weekend rather than being delayed. Captain America will have less resonance elsewhere. Both Transformers movies made $400 million or so in foreign distribution, more than 50% of the total. The first movie in a comic book franchise typically makes less than 50% foreign.
If you were in business to take chances you wouldn’t have made a Transformers feature to begin with, let alone a second sequel. By reversing the order you may gain $20 million for Captain America but lose $30 million for Transformers just from the opening weekend. And that multiplies out. That’s not a good gamble.
I’m not saying you’re wrong overall. I think you’re wrong in this particular case, which is an unusual one.
