Bridget Jones or gorefests for Valentine's? The secret science of film release dates

Telegraph

14-02-2025

The milkshake hit the glass office door, erupting on impact. At least, that's how the story goes – a tale whispered around Hollywood about a well-known director, who, years ago, is said to have lost his temper in a meeting with the studio bankrolling his next blockbuster.
He'd just been told that the studio's plans had shifted – the film would now be hitting cinemas a few months later than originally agreed. Outraged by this change, the filmmaker flew into a rage, and the contents of his strawberry shake flew across the wall. Rumour has it he stormed out through a door streaked sugary pink, muttering something about sabotage.
Whether true or an industry myth, this story speaks to the sensitivity of feeling in the industry around one of the most crucial parts of the Hollywood machine.
The release date calendar – what films are released in cinemas when – is, in the words of movie distribution expert Hamish Moseley, 'frantic and fascinatingly complex… kind of like air traffic control,' he laughs.
A film's release date can dictate whether it sinks or soars. It can influence what sort of awards season recognition it receives. And with multiplex attendances continuing to decline and the future of the entire theatrical distribution model under threat as distractions like streaming and social media grow in popularity, more rests on this calendar than ever before.
'You need to get the date right. If you get the date wrong then you are really hobbled from the start,' says Moseley, who previously worked as Director of Distribution for Netflix in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (prior to that, he oversaw the UK releases of films like Moonlight, Minari, The Woman in Black and Lady Macbeth). There's 'definitely an art' to how films are scheduled, he says, but it's an art that passes most movie fans by unnoticed.
Look at the movie listings for the year ahead. It's easy to guess why Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, hitting cinemas this week, has been given a February 13 launch – the Renée Zellweger franchise has long grappled with the foibles of singledom and quest for true love, making it the perfect comfort watch for filmgoers going through their own romantic trials and tribulations this Valentine's Day.
Similarly, you don't need a PHD to work out why Jurassic World: Rebirth is roaring into cinemas on July 2, primed to take a meaty bite out of the box office during Independence Day weekend. The biggest studio blockbusters are historically always released in the summer because 'the summer represents the longest period of holidays and most simultaneous holidays globally, and therefore the largest possible audience for a movie during both opening and playout,' says Veronika Kwan Vandenberg, President of Distribution for Universal.
Less immediately apparent, though, is why January and February sees such an explosion in horror movie releases so far away from Halloween (Drew Hancock's Companion and Oz Perkins's upcoming Stephen King adaptation The Monkey are among this spring's batch of blood-splattered gorefests). Or why, after winning Best Picture at the Oscars with his last film, Parasite, Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho's Mickey 17 has been shifted around so many times, with a March 7 release now seemingly locked in.
A lot of it is to do with timing, reflecting back moviegoers' emotional states attached to particular times of the year and when the demographic of your film is primed and ready for a trip to the multiplex. Get the timing of a movie right and a smash hit potentially awaits. 'Dating a film in the right corridor to optimise theatrical success is the most important consideration,' Kwan Vandenberg explains, adding that it 'dictates how successful the film will be across its whole lifecycle'.
Time a release incorrectly, however, and you're in danger of losing millions. Solo: A Star Wars Story, for example, was given a May 10 2018 release date after a run of Star Wars movies released during the busy Christmas period, which generated billions.
'Solo failed for a lot of reasons, one of them absolutely being complacency when it came to the release window,' says one person familiar with the production, speaking anonymously to protect their relationship with Disney. 'Putting it out in May meant competing with Deadpool 2, released a week earlier. All while Avengers: Infinity War was still breaking box office records. That's a lot of competition for a film going after the same young comic book, fanboy audience, coming so soon after the last dose of Star Wars, which historically has always been event cinema – not something released every six months.'
This source suggests that moving the release date a few months further into the summer 'might have made all the difference' when it came to the movie's box office. (With directors often paid a percentage of their movie's total profits, an agreement known as 'back end,' no wonder the occasional milkshake goes flying.)
Situations like Solo are why studios operate with a 'certain pragmatism,' as Moseley calls it, when it comes to scheduling their movies around other films that might attract similar demographics. 'There's an understanding that [film] is actually a relatively small industry and we need to help each other out for the greater good of the industry. Because if we have a lot of very large films failing, that's not good for the industry at large,' he explains.
'If a major contender targeted at a similar audience is already dated on a weekend, it [would be] a calculated risk for us to claim the same date,' adds Vandenberg – especially given the boom in popularity around seeing huge cinematic productions like Dune Part II in Imax format. 'There are only so many [Imax] screens,' says Moseley, leading to situations like the stand-off between 2023's Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, released 10 days apart, minimising the amount of 'premium format' showings the Tom Cruise action spectacle could offer audiences and harming its overall box office.
This process of 'slot jockeying' blockbuster releases begins to take shape years in advance. 'The larger the film, the earlier on the release date is confirmed,' says Moseley, explaining how this is in part down to the large financial overlay attached to blockbusters. 'If there's a big film like Oppenheimer that Universal have paid hundreds of millions for, and know that they're going to invest another few hundred million into for marketing and PR, that's an incredibly important part of their budget for the whole company for the next few years. And so they need to time that carefully.'
Among their considerations as these blockbusters are placed into the movie calendar are all sorts of cultural distractions that might see the film struggle to find an audience. 'The new Grand Theft Auto game coming out this year is a once-in-a-decade enormous event that will wipe out the young male demographic,' says Moseley. 'We know they're going to invest heavily in that game and play it for a period of time in which they'll probably stop going to see films.'
'We do take cultural events into consideration,' says Vandenberg, pointing to sport events like the World Cup as examples. 'We date around certain [football tournaments] depending on each market and how soccer-crazy it is, but we don't avoid those corridors [entirely] since they are still lucrative holiday periods.'
Some cultural events, though, have less obvious blueprints for how to navigate. In November 2024, America was due to vote in an election dubbed one of the most consequential of all-time by political commentators. 'Will people not go to the movies because they'll be distracted by the election?' asks Moseley, as an example of the sort of questions facing studio decision-makers. 'Or would it be a great time, because people want the escape? Is it not worth doing because you can't get the word of mouth out there? The media spend in the run-up to the election by Trump and Harris would have been in the billions – meaning there was probably little traditional media [TV ad slots] left to buy to promote your film.'
Ultimately, Hollywood steered clear entirely; no major releases hit cinemas the week that America went to the polls, a decision reflective of how 'everyone is scared to make a mistake,' Moseley says.
Once the huge tent pole films have their release dates slotted into the calendar, the rest of the movie industry begins a process of 'okay, you're there, so we'll go here,' as Moseley puts it. 'Counter programming is a big thing. January is a big time for awards season contenders like Anora and The Brutalist. But to a lot of people who just want to be entertained, those films feel like taking medicine. They don't want to see Bradley Cooper in black and white, they want to see Jason Statham kicking bad guys' heads in. So there's actually a tradition during the awards window of dumb action films doing very well.' He points to movies like current hits Den of Thieves 2 and Mel Gibson's Flight Risk as examples of this.
Problems are mounting for Hollywood, whose 2024 domestic gross totalled just $8.56 billion – a four per cent decline from 2023. With $1.3 billion of that amount courtesy of just one film (Deadpool & Wolverine), it's clearly harder than ever to convince audiences to fork out for cinema tickets, petrol and parking when they're already paying for streaming services at home. This leaves little room for margin when it comes to the movie release calendar, admits Moseley. Luckily, studios have a weapon to help them fight back: a more sophisticated understanding of audience demographics than ever before, and a willingness to try new things.
For example, the reason why so many horror movies are in cinemas right now, such as Universal's Wolfman, is because 2022's surprise smash M3GAN revealed that 'horror films are great date movies,' he chuckles. 'And so horror films can often do very well around Valentine's Day. That took a long time to figure out.'