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Analysis of 2013 US Summer Tentpole Movie Release Schedule

· 4 min read

A simple analysis of all the wide-release movies for the 2013 summer season by genre — and the chess game studios play staking their flags on the most coveted weekends.

As I was actively procrastinating on one of the final papers for the quarter, I did what I do most naturally - checking out movies. When I was in China during the past five years, one of the things I missed the most about America was its summer time, when exciting tentpole event movies came out one after another, one-upping each other on box-office records. It's the quintessential American cultural immersion experience. At times of feeling down in January - April, I would cheer myself up by thinking, it's OK, the summer is coming, there will be many great movies to watch and plenty fantasies to live in.

Despite of my intimate knowledge of US box-office and movie release schedule, I have never studied its distribution in an analytical fashion - until now. For Hollywood's major movie studios, there is a whole science about staking your flag on the most coveted weekends and scaring away competitors, though many times they do have to learn to cohabit. It's a very interesting chess game where game theory and various tactics are played to the fullest. Here's a simple analysis of all the wide-release (more than 3,000 cinemas) movies for 2013 summer season by genres.

2013 US Summer Movie Release Schedule

There are a few observations and takeaways, some of which must be obvious to industry veterans.

  • Rule #1, balance, balance, balance. Always balance the mix. Never over-saturate screens with one single genre.

  • Any deviation from Rule #1 spells trouble. For example, Will Smith (After Earth) is on the way of losing its opening weekend box-office champion title to Now You See Me, which will raise some eyebrows. I think Smith was a bit over-confident of his box-office draw. R.I.P.D and RED2 on July 19 are both cross-over between action and comedy, which is kinda a rare phenomenon. It might just work well for both. Matt Damon's Elysium is pitted against Percy Jackson, which targets slightly younger audience but will still bring considerable challenge to Damon. Maybe Elysium's distributor TriStar just doesn't have enough confidence in this movie to stake it in a more competitive weekend.

  • Technically speaking, there are only two event movies for this summer: Iron Man 3 and Star Trek, both of which are well-established sci-fi franchises. When they opened, every other studio stayed away to avoid being burned alive. Iron Man 3 has lived up to industry expectation while not so much for Star Trek (though personally I like it a lot).

  • Action-comedy is the most frequent combo (duh...). "Action" includes action, adventure, thriller, sci-fi, fantasy, basically pop-corn movies that do not exhaust too much brain power, movies that can help you just "let go".

  • Every other week studios throw family-themed animation flicks into the mix to keep the kids interested, so that their parents can earn some "chips" to go to cinema next week without them.

  • Horror movie is just not for summer time.

  • Wide-release drama is a hard-sell. It takes some gravy ingredients like Fitzgerald and DiCaprio to open a serious drama movie. Most other drama movies (Before Midnight) in the summer are just opening bands to the major headliner rock superstars (action/comedy), from a commercial standpoint.

  • There are three weekends with 3-4 wide-release movies. May 24 is the memorial day weekend, when Hollywood has the highest single-day box-office gross for the entire year. I'm not quite sure what's going on with July 19 and Aug 9. They look like dumping ground to me, or maybe studios just try to screw up each other.

  • Distribution-wise, Pitt's World War Z and Depp's Lone Ranger have both been set up to perform (with only one animation to hold hands with on their opening weekends). If they fail, well, then they're meant to fail.

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