“Fantastic Four” flinches

The film version of Fantastic Four has been pushed back one week until July 8, 2005. Fox claims that this has nothing to do with competition and everything to do with better positioning. Why is it a better position to release your film one week after one of the two highest grossing weekends of the year? (The July 4 weekend was the highest grossing until Star Wars and Spider-Man started coming out on Memorial Day.) Could it be because the loss of general moviegoing traffic is less damaging than coming out two days after the Spielberg/Cruise collaboration of War of the Worlds? I know the conclusions I’ve come to, and they don’t agree with the Fox press releases.

7 replies on ““Fantastic Four” flinches”

  1. it keeps coming
    Every piece of news about that movie depresses me. Now they’ve abandoned to idea of realeasing the Fantastic FOUR movie on July 4th? The trend keeps on trodding.

    • Re: it keeps coming

      Every piece of news about that movie depresses me. Now they’ve abandoned to idea of realeasing the Fantastic FOUR movie on July 4th? The trend keeps on trodding.

      July 4th is a Monday. Monday releases have been attempted, and have failed miserably because it’s so hard to book the movies. To open on a Monday, you have to pull another movie off the screen before Tuesday night, which most film companies refuse to do. A Wednesday release with a Tuesday midnight show can work, because you’re adding Tuesday screenings without removing another film. Tuesday is the only real shot at weeknight dollars, so film companies will sacrifice Wednesday and Thursday for an old release to maintain the PR that keeps things amicable. (Still, if you watch carefully, you’ll notice that most Wednesday openers replace another movie by the same studio, so the money is still going to the same company.) If you can’t get the movie onto the screens, it can’t make you any money.

      The real question is why they couldn’t manage to get it out on Wednesday, May 4. Either the special effects are in a time crunch, or they didn’t want to come out that much before the Memorial Day weekend. Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the only film resembling competition there this year.

        • Re: it keeps coming

          You’ve given this some thought! : )

          I spent three years working at a theater, part of that
          time on the management team. I’ve seen the politics first
          hand. For example, in order to get Toy Story on
          its first day of release (November 22, 1995), we had to
          open The Big Green in our largest theater and
          keep it there for two weeks when it opened on September 29
          of that year. To Die For, Devil In A Blue
          Dress
          , Assassins, Dead Presidents,
          and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers all got
          blocked from that theater. Granted, none of those were
          great, but they were all more profitable, and were selling
          more tickets than The Big Green. (If you haven’t
          seen The Big Green, it’s The Mighty
          Ducks
          with gender swaps and soccer. I’m not kidding.
          Four year olds were complaining that they’d seen it
          already on opening day. It’s virtually identical, right
          down to tying the goalie to the net because he’s afraid of
          the ball.)

  2. From what I heard…
    Isn’t Doctor Doom a hobo with lightning powers now?

    I mean, that should tell you all you need to know about what level of
    quality this movie will be.

    • Re: From what I heard…

      Isn’t Doctor Doom a hobo with lightning powers now?

      I mean, that should tell you all you need to know about what level of
      quality this movie will be.

      An astronaut with lightning powers.

      Slightly less bad.

Comments are closed.