July Preview: When Will We Next See a Wide Release?
July 1, 2020
Will there be a new wide theatrical release in July?
Just over two weeks ago, the answer to that question looked like it might be yes.
NATO, the North American Theater Owners trade association, said they expected about 90% of theaters would re-open by the time Tenet was set to debut on July 17. Things have changed since then, to say the least.
The overly-optimistic predictions came before the United States topped 40,000 newly-detected COVID-19 cases in a single day for multiple days in a row. Now that we’re at the beginning of July, only one film is still scheduled to open wide this month, Unhinged, that’s hanging on by a thread. That prompts the question, when can we realistically expect to see a new wide release?
Let’s look at the data…
To get an estimate, we have looked at films that meet two criteria: first, they have a reasonable chance of being the first wide release as theaters open up, and, second, they have moved release dates since the pandemic started. (The second criterion means we focus on films where the distributor is actively trying to position the film to be an early market entrant, rather than ones that have sat on the same date for a while, which might just mean the distributor is holding off making any sort of decision.) There are four films that meet those rules: Unhinged, The Broken Hearts Gallery, Tenet, and Greenland. In order to get a fairly stable prediction, the analysis takes the average release date of all four.
The chart above shows the result. On May 12, distributor Solstice Studios threw their hat in the ring by moving the release of Unhinged forward to July 1, and we’ve taken that as the start date for the battle to be first. At the time, the average release date among the four films (excluding Broken Hearts Gallery, which was not yet dated) was July 10. That was 59 days in the future. Greenland was briefly scheduled for June 19, which brought the likely first release even closer. Over the next few weeks, aside from Greenland being pushed back, planned release dates remained fairly stable, so the graph shows a steady downward slope as the expected release date gets one day closer each day.
The end of May and early June saw some cracks appear in everyone’s plans, with Tenet eventually being moved to July 31. Every changed date had the effect of bumping the graph back up as the time until the next wide release grew longer. Since then, the chart shows a sawtooth pattern, as various release dates have been pushed back. (You can see a record of all the updates on our release date changes page.)
The trendline for this chart has a slope of -0.26, meaning that the date of the next wide release has been getting 0.26 days closer, on average, each day since May 12. Or, to think of it another way: every four days, release dates are getting pushed back by three days. If you think time has been moving in mysterious ways, you’re not wrong!
As of today, July 1, the average release date for the four movies we’re looking at is August 8, which is 38 days away. Assuming we continue on the trend we’ve seen since May 12, the actual date of the first wide release will be about 38 x 4 = 152 days from now. November 25 to be precise—Thanksgiving!
If that sounds bad, if you look just at the trendline for June, the slope is -0.1, meaning we’re only getting one day closer to a wide release every 10 days. That puts the likely date for the next wide release sometime next Summer.
There are a couple of big caveats to this analysis. You’ll notice that the graph heads down towards 30 days, and then bounces back again. This is because distributors do most of the marketing for a film in the month before its release. Once a film breaks through that 30 day barrier it might be too late to be worth stopping its release (that’s what happened to Trolls: World Tour at the beginning of the pandemic, and prompted its PVOD release). Essentially we’re in a holding pattern right now, but it’s possible a distributor will just decide to go ahead with a release whatever happens rather than wait until the time is just right.
It’s also worth considering the possibility that one of the studios decides to go ahead with a big release even if there aren’t enough open theaters to go wide. For example, Disney might drop Mulan in August as planned, partly to have a big movie to release in Asian markets, which are beginning to more fully reopen, and partly so they have something to put on Disney+ at Thanksgiving or for Christmas.
In short, there are a lot of factors at play here. The data can do something to hide biased expectations, including fatalism and wishful thinking, but it can’t adjust to the possibility of something significantly out of the ordinary happening. Barring that, it shouldn’t come as a surprise if we’re still theoretically a month away from the next wide release at the beginning of August, and that we actually get a new wide release towards the end of the year.
One piece of evidence that suggests at least some of the studios are thinking along the same lines is the change to the release of SpongeBob SquarePants: Sponge on the Run. Paramount recently announced that the film would skip theaters and take the same Premium VOD route that Trolls World Tour and Scoob took. That’s not surprising in itself, but the planned release date is: early 2021. One wouldn’t expect a studio to do that if they thought the box office will return to normal by Thanksgiving, because by early 2021 the monster hits of Thanksgiving would begin to hit the home market. That move suggests at least some are thinking that the box office won’t return to normal until next Spring or Summer, which would mean a full year of no major theatrical releases due to the pandemic. The analysis above suggests that scenario isn’t as crazy as it might sound.
With all that said, we should at least acknowledge that one film is still shooting for a wide release this month. Without further ado, here’s our preview…!
This will be Solstice Studios’ first release, whenever that actually happens. The film was recently pushed back from the 10th to the 31st. This wasn’t the first release date change forced on the film by the pandemic and, as noted above, it may well not be the last. Even if it does get another release date, it may well struggle. Russell Crowe hasn’t had a lot of box office drawing power in recent years. Also, the film is being released by a brand new distributor, which normally causes a film to underperform as teething troubles are ironed out. Solstice deserves credit for their bold strategy with the film so far though, and hopefully will be rewarded when the time for its release finally arrives.
Unhinged
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Official Site: UnhingedMovie.com
Distributor: Solstice Studios
Release Date: July 31st, 2020
MPAA Rating: R for strong violent content, and language throughout.
Source: Original Screenplay
Genre: Thriller/Suspense
Keywords:
Road Rage, Psychological Thriller, Revenge
Directed By: Derrick Borte
Written By: Carl Ellsworth
Starring: Russell Crowe, Caren Pistorius
Production Budget: Reported at $33 million
Box Office Potential: $20 million if it finds a new release date
Filed under: Monthly Preview, Unhinged, Russell Crowe, Derrick Borte, Carl Ellsworth, Caren Pistorius, Geraldine Viswanathan, Natalie Krinsky