It was a staring contest for the ages, and it looks like someone finally blinked. It was "Captain America 3" and "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" locked into a May 6, 2016 release date, and both films and their studios refused to back down.
In the end, it was "Batman v. Superman" that made the big move to a vacated March 25, 2016 release date, almost two months before "Captain America 3" drops. As "summer movies" move into non-summer months, the move to March may actually be a very good thing for Warner Bros. and its flagship characters.
The studio will have a solid six weeks before "Captain America 3" hits theaters. After much speculation from industry insiders on just who would back down, it was Warner Bros. that decided to reschedule. Some are saying that the studio did not want to face off against another blockbuster, but that's not the whole story.
"The reality now is there really isn't a bad week to open a movie. If you look at the summer box office this year, you can see that there were so many movies, one after the other. You can start with Spider-Man, two weeks later Godzilla, and then Maleficent, and then Edge of Tomorrow, and then Jump Street and Transformers. And the one thing they all had in common, not one of them did over $250 million. We'll be the first one up [in 2016], which is very important, and we'll have six weeks before Captain America comes," Dan Fellman, Warner Bros.' president of domestic distribution told Entertainment Weekly.
It sounds like some industry insiders knew that Warner Bros. would be the one to move its picture to the March release date. Now its film is in a traditionally slow period at the box office with little to no competition.
"There's that perception [that Warner Bros. retreated], but I think at the end of the day, he who wins is just the one who's smart.They're going to have an incredible amount of playing time before the Marvel movie kicks off. Putting this movie on a non-conventional date is going to pay big benefits for Warner Bros., for the theater owners-who love films that have legs-and for the audience. [Customers] will have a really cool movie to go out and see in March," says Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst for Rentrak..
It is still a while off until 2016, but it looks to be one heck of a year at the box office.
