Make an Argument
Is it hipper to release a movie in December than in summer?
By Eric Hughes
August 25, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I’ve been in the city for just over a year now, so I don’t quite know how long Wicker Park’s been the mecca for wearers of tight-fit jeans and vintage attire. Yet the district is hands down the established veteran. It’s got the bevy of music venues, hand-me-down bookstores and recycled fashion stores to prove it.
Logan Square, though, and within the past year, no less, is gaining an upper hand. I think much of it is due to the multitude of new restaurants and bars that have spruced up the space. It’s becoming hip and cool to live there - and that, I guess, is all you need.
Paired with that is a sense of camaraderie amongst Logan Square establishments. This summer, the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival was my favorite summer street fair - in Chicago, there are many -- because the spirit of the fest was so unified. Local restaurants and breweries only - no institutions outside the Kedzie/Logan intersection allowed (and, certainly, no annoying national or even regional chains). I was impressed by the intentionality of a neighborhood fest that actually represented, well, the neighborhood.
I don’t know that December releases share that same sense of solidarity at the U.S. box office - in fact, it’d be totally weird if they did - but I like to think Christmastime movies are the Logan Square to the summer’s Wicker Park. You know, summer is the established vet; December is the industry’s young and shiny thing.
For one, summer has asserted itself as the go-to frame for box office largely due to its size (and reputation). The summer season is a gigantic period for blockbusters and tent poles to stick their grubby little fingers in as many theater houses as possible. What was once, say, a May to early August thing has transitioned into April to end of August. (And, thanks to Alice in Wonderland and maybe 300, we’ve now got some of the big guns debuting in March. The Hunger Games, which I think will outdo Twilight, opens March 23rd).
What that does, though, is dilute the summer season into a bloated child with weaker punch. The fat cats, delighted as pigs in poo to swell the calendar year with more blockbusters, would certainly wag a nasty finger at that. (I mean, Harry Potter 8 just outdid The Dark Knight by $10 or so million its opening weekend…) But, I think, like when Troy realized on Community that rooming with Abed wouldn’t work because they’d then see too much of each other, too much of a good thing sometimes becomes a bad thing.
Look at 3D. Who’s genuinely excited to see a 3D movie anymore? Perhaps I’m biased; I’ve never quite understood it. I see 3D as an occasion to spend $5 more dollars on an already overpriced movie ticket to wear funky glasses for two hours. Conceivably I’m not alone in this anymore; just ask the people who avoided the Glee movie, Conan the Barbarian and the new Spy Kids. The latter performed “best” with a slim $11.6 million from about 3,300 movie houses.
American audiences will continue watching their blockbusters - their Dark Knight Rises and Amazing Spider-Mans - so I don’t mean to suggest that box office will noticeably suffer from longer summer seasons. But opening The Hunger Games on March 23rd and calling it a summer blockbuster is ludicrously incorrect. March 23rd is mere hours away from being a winter day, people!
Because we’re talking about “hipness” here - we all have our own definitions, really - December wins the category. For now, January is a wasteland, so I wouldn’t expect December’s box office season to stretch too far past the new year. On the flipside, franchises like Harry Potter and Twilight have made major headway in November. So much so that Puss in Boots, Happy Feet 2 and The Muppets will try to replicate their successes a few months from now. Some might even argue that the season begins even earlier than that - at the end of October, to include the Paranormal Activities and Saws (and, even bigger, the latest Jackass).
Whatever the case may be, I like the compactness to the season. (By the way, what are we calling it? The December season? Winter? Christmastime?) It’s a month and a half to two months, and then that’s it. Show’s over, wrap up the gear and let’s get the eff out.
Surely the summer season owns 17 of the top 20 biggest three-day weekends of all time. No one here can question the power in Americans - out of school teens, especially - wanting to escape the hot heat by hiding in a movie theater for a couple hours. Yet ‘round the halls of BOP, David Mumpower champions that the best stretch of box office actually begins in late December before bleeding into January a couple days. He says:
“For those of you new to the process, the time frame of the week before Christmas to the third day of January is the most lucrative box office period on the calendar. The end result of this is that most films will experience daily revenue on a par with a Friday, sometimes even a Saturday. So, we are looking at a 12-day period wherein all films in release experience a run of a dozen consecutive Fridays, give or take a bit. This is a blueprint example of a rising tide lifting all boats.”
If the summer and December seasons were personified a bit, December would continue doing what it does best: remaining indifferent. It wouldn’t humble itself or even gloat about Mumpower’s argument by hanging it over summer’s head. If the shoe was on the other foot, though, you know summer would be trumpeting nonstop about how it has the year’s most profitable stretch. It’s just in its loud and abrasive character to do so.
This column took a weird turn somewhere.
The December season, then, oozes cool by restricting its number of weekends to something less than summer - kinda like a musical or drama running as a limited engagement at the theater. Restrictions heighten demand, and maybe, in a very odd way, that’s how December releases can sometimes be so freakin’ leggy. (See Avatar’s final domestic tally, or its amazing 1.83% drop from week one to week two - even though it played in about the same number of theaters).
At the same time, according to the Word of Mumpower, the December season’s got something - 12 days of box office - that the summer season doesn’t have. And I don’t know that this will change if summer continues growing.
(And in case you couldn’t tell, Logan Square would get my vote, too).