Greens
1) While the months are expanding, sometimes, it is still very rarely the case. When I say blockbuster I mean the BIG budgeted movies. Not an action movie done with a relative budget or that it has similar components to it: Jack Reacher, Miss Pelligrene's. But BIG, those are what need to be spread out a lot more. I'm not saying release Jack Reacher in October. I'm saying release X Men in September. Scary notion at first? Yeah. But it'd be given more time and have basically no competition for at least two months. Smaller opening, but TWO MONTHS OF LEGS.
Dr. Strange is a movie that should have released in the beginning of October or mid October. It would have had more time to itself AND it could have capitalized off of people increasingly becoming fascinated with the paranormal, supernatural, and the weird around the time that Halloween kicks into high gear. Instead of being propelled by people's fascination in the macabre around Halloween, it's riding off of when people are winding down from their interest in it and it only has one week to itself because a Harry Potter sequel comes out to decrease its legs potential. Why November then? Age old classic reasoning - November and December are "blockbuster" months. School has nothing to do with it, to my knowledge kids are still in school in the beginning of November like they are mid October. Hell, even in some places the weather would be better - less of a chance of decreasing earnings due to being snowed out. It's less strategy, feeding off of an increased enthusiasm for the strange, and more superstition oddly.
Chamber
2) The marketing team isn't misleading execs anything. Executives are chained to the notion of needing to make back most of their money at box office in the first two days and with more movies piling on top of each other during the summer that's especially the case. When that is the case that's not movies mainly flying and flopping on their own merits. They're not given enough time to in this cannibalizing age to find and grow it's audience. Thus, it all revolves around those two days. That means movies rise and fall around it's marketing during the summer and the winter. And the way to guarantee strong marketing? Giving people what they already know they like and wishing for the best.
If in two weeks you have three giant IP movies coming out and one random original idea that nobody's ever heard of before, the original idea gets a slightly better critic score to a lot better critic score but is only given really two days to excel to one week before the two huge IPs come out and then the week after two more huge IPs come out (and two sometimes per week can be an understatement) while trying to get out of the shadow of the IP released in the same week, which do you really think will realistically nine times out of ten come out on top and which do you think will become another critically loved film that is sadly overlooked by audiences (The Nice Guys this summer for instance)? The marketing team isn't misleading the execs anything. It's when you only have two days and if it fails you're fired - you're always going to go with what can be sold the easiest. And selling them on what they already know is a lot easier than selling them on something they've never heard of before. And when you're suffocated by hawkers dishing something out that they already know and you're standing among them with something they've never heard of before and you're only given opening weekend to make most of your money back. Who do you think will realistically come out on top nine times out of ten?
Marketing isn't convincing anything. Survival in an old system that's breaking down is what is at fault. Given one weekend and your life is on the line it's much safer giving people what they know because what they don't know would take time that due to a cannibalizing summer they don't have and they increasingly have less of (this summer being a nightmare when every week it seemed like two IPs came out, some weeks four to five came out at any one time).
I forgot who said it or where I read it from, but Titanic and ET would "not happen today" and especially not with this current implosion cannibalizing model Hollywood has backed itself frighteningly into. As a filmmaker I dread the notion of anything selling and being slotted into the summer months, I'd rather it be put in the fall or "dump months" because summer is increasingly becoming the kiss of death. Those movies (ET, Titanic, etc.) were given months, now usually one month in and you're out of the theater and if not that - two months in because there's sooo many movies cramped into very little time and there's only so many screens. All that time is gone now.
