Amph The 2023 Box Office Blood Barbie

Sorry for the long post here, but the numbers just do not support your theory. In short, April is viable for certain AAA. March is viable for AA and very, very rarely for AAA. February is sometimes viable for AA, but is not viable at all for AAA. No matter how many times they've tried.

You have more fingers on a single hand than there are successful AAA February releases in total.

March:

March has usually been most viable for AA blockbuster releases like John Wick and animated/family films, where they only need to hit $400-500m worldwide to be a success. AAAs sometimes step their toe in the water (mostly due to spring breaks), but rarely do anywhere near as well as they would have had they had a non-competitive summer slot.

March films will generally hit a ceiling of around $600-700m (again, worldwide). Not bad at all, sure, but, again, not what they would have done in the summer. There are exceptions, though, and $1b films are possible there. But it's very rare to see a film that needs to perform to that high of a level (ie: a $200+m budget) actually being released then because it's such a massive risk compared to a summer release.

Just look at what March releases have hit $1b: Beauty & the Beast (a live action adaptation performance of which Disney is still chasing and has only met/exceeded in the July release month window [ie: what is generally among the most-coveted release dates]), Captain Marvel (while a legit hit, definitely had an Endgame boost that got it to that point), Alice in Wonderland (probably the last major film to really take advantage of the post-Avatar 3D boost vs just regular premiums), Zootopia (just barely, but legit did it on its own- but with a budget of only $150m), and... that's it. 4 films. Only 1 of which was achieved without non-repeatable circumstances (and had no need to actually perform to that level when being scheduled for that release window in the first place, ie: low-risk).

Scope that out further to above-$700m and you get BVS ($874m, seen as a big disappointment), The Batman ($771, a success due to lower budget and in spite of post-pandemic conditions), and...that's it. 2 films. Both Batman. Not even the far-cheaper, younger-skewing Hunger Games, or well-reviewed, older-skewing Logan make the cut-off (though Logan was R rated, to be fair).

April:

Mario is lightning in a bottle (especially with the rotating Easter weekend timing). Last week of April (for Endgame) is essentially still May because of Marvel- they almost always release their films on, or a week ahead of, the first Saturday in May/Free Comic Book Day/Marvel Weekend (which means they can sometimes come out slightly later and free up the last weekend in April for competing films to squeeze in, like Fast 5). The only major exception was Winter Solider, which did hit in early April- but it only came out early because Amazing Spider-Man 2 took Marvel Weekend.

You're right that there has been creep into April over the last decade (almost entirely due to the expansion of the MCU releases and the carving-out-our-corner approach of the Fast series- which had to give itself space from the Marvel releases and, so, began declaring "the summer begins now"-type statements in their ad campaigns).

But even looking at the top 10 openings from that month, and it's 4 Fast films, 3 MCU, Mario, Sonic 2 & Jungle Book. And the releases fall off of a cliff soon after that (with sub-Clash of the Titans, sub-Shazam-level performances of AAAs, followed by more typical AAs like A Quiet Place, Morbius, etc). Generally speaking, outside of those two specific franchises (which mostly expanded into April, rather than starting in April), April hasn't evolved much past its traditional "smaller films that are summer-worthy but that would get crushed by the bigger summer releases" role.

February:

It's never going to happen. Not in our lifetimes. They've tried to make that month viable for AAA releases (beyond horror and romcoms) for 20 years and it hasn't worked. And the very, very few successes have been unrepeatable (which means they didn't change the overall viability of that month as a release window for such projects).

5 movies in Feb have opened above $80m. Everything else is sub-$70m. Most sub-$60m. Ant-Man 3 being the most recent example of a "near" record-breaking opening for that first category (and is still considered to be, at best, a break-even film, assuming that its budget is under-$200m [which it might not be]).

In terms of overall gross, less than 10 Feb films have ever grossed above $400m worldwide. 4 films have done above $500m. 3 have gone above $600m (one of which is Passion of the Christ, which has both an Easter boost [a little over a month after release] and faith-based boost for its early run, otherwise it would have certainly been in the previous brackets). 2 above $700m. 1 of those is Deadpool (certainly notable, but for other reasons difficult to replicate). The other, as I mentioned in my initial post that you were responding to, is the only true exception for February: Black Panther (which would have gone above $1b even without an Avengers boost).

Studios are not going to see those numbers and drop a AAA-budget film into those slots without very specific circumstances or advantages. If the MCU can't replicate something or make something a thing, what chance does a lesser franchise installment have, let alone an original property? It's not going to happen. Theatrical films are simply not a "if you release it, they will come"-type scenario. That's the unfortunate reality- and it hasn't changed in decades, nor is it changing now (as far as release month windows).

The only months that have seen change in the last quarter of a century (and it's less "have changed" and more "have slightly evolved") have been January and December, with Jan no longer being a pure dumping ground (not AAA territory, but not a garbage can; thanks Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition!*) and Dec now turning the mid-Dec/week-before-Xmas date into one of the Top 3 release dates for films that can have long runs (thanks Titanic, Lord of the Rings, Avatar and The Force Awakens! An example of efforts over a 20 year period that were successful).

*BTW, unrelated, but total shout-out to the ANH:SE. Opening to $35m in a January in 1997 was a ridiculous accomplishment. Of the Top 160 opening weekends in January, only 5 are from 1997 or earlier:

#12: ANH:SE, $35m (1997)
#121: Good Morning Vietnam, $11.7m (1988)
#133: Born on the Fourth of July, $11m (1990)
#145: From Dusk Til Dawn, $10m (1996)
#160: Mr. Hollan's Opus, $9.2m (1996)

And, suddenly, you start seeing a lot more January releases doing better than those predecessors (especially 2-3 years later after schedules could be adjusted). Since it soon became replicatable, it showed that the month suddenly improved its viability vs the SWSE just being a one-off exception (which it easily could have turned out to be).

 

That's what I was trying to get at it. It being the first to ride the 3D coattails also sort of made it the last. Not saying that other films between 2010-2013 didn't get 3D boosts, but I don't think any got a boost like Alice did due to how hot Avatar was at the time.

Absolutely. That's why I wanted to make sure to highlight those exceptions and how they did have something unique to build around. It makes you see why the studios were willing to take the financial risk with them. It's not as simple as just plug-and-playing a AAA from the summer into February.

 

Yep, and then a month later we got the Clash of the Titans conversion rush-job and people were like "Oh.".

 

All three versions of Black Christmas went for a Xmas release. But that's probably another example of an exception rather than a rule.

 

You give me an excuse to number-crunch, I'm gonna number-crunch .



Me, loading-up BOM charts:

 

I'll go recharge in the back and you can stay up in the front, where they still won't release Mission Impossible films in February or March.