Why summer?

This summer season has so far been absolutely stuffed with seemingly more big blockbusters than ever before. For the film fan, that's surely a good thing - more stuff to see, right? I'm not certain, though, that it's entirely good for business.

Recently in the US there was a 3-week stretch that saw Die Hard 4, Ratatouille, Transformers and Harry Potter 5 released, one after another. The first two were released two days apart. This cramming of the release schedules means that increasingly the films have to make a big dent in their first few days to have much hope of hanging around in cinemas for long.

Competition is surely a good thing, of course, but I just feel that by releasing such high profile films so close together, the studios are unneccessarily eating into their takings. This summer was tipped to be the biggest of all time (and may still be), mainly due to the three giants released in May, namely Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Unsurprisingly, though, none of these have reached the heights of previous series instalments or come anywhere near $400 million domestic.

My question is, would they have made more money if they had been released further apart? The answer, to me, would appear to be "quite probably". The problem for the studios is that there are only so many weeks in the summer, and they each have to jostle for the best position.

Let me propose a radical notion. How about blockbusters are released all year round? Why do they all have to be splurged out in summer, within weeks of each other? (Or, in the last few years, November/December.) One major advantage of summer is that for much of the time schools are on holiday, meaning more weekday business, but that doesn't explain why May is seen as such a big month for business. Schools are still in session and in the UK at least (I don't know about America), May and June contain the exam period for schools and universities.

Some months of the year are seen as "dump months", in which studios release films they expect will make little money. Such months include September and February, often pretty rubbish months for film releases. Studios don't release their big films in these months because they're seen as months when people don't go to the cinema as much, but perhaps that's just because so few appealing films are released?

Back in 1975, summer was seen as a bad period in which to release films. People prefer to stay outdoors in the nice weather, the logic said. Then Jaws was released. Two years later, Star Wars. This year, 300's $70 million launch proved that March can generate blockbuster grosses. I'd like to see each major film given more room to breathe, with perhaps one or two blockbusters released each month. I don't see why a film that people genuinely want to see would fail if it was released in February. To paraphrase an old adage, "If you film it, they will come".

It would help matters if blockbusters were more consistently good, though.


[The other side of the coin here is that the lack of blockbusters in the "down" months means that they don't suffocate smaller, low-budget fare. I think both could survive, given sufficient quality.]