If you could have switched release dates of movies in 2016.....

Trolls and Angry Birds. I'd rather see Angry Birds get #2 to Doctor Strange so that Trolls could be #1.

Barbershop 3 and War Dogs.

Neighbors 2 and Risen.

Central Intelligence and My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2.

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Agree to a degree with Beyond - though I think the bad marketing and Paramount so very obviously dumping the film and excluding it from the few 50th anniversary promotions they bothered with was the real problem - but I really don't think Tarzan would have worked at all at Christmas. Just as The Last of the Mohicans was moved from Summer to Fall because it didn't feel like a Summer movie, some films just seem to naturally belong at certain times of the year, and Tarzan feels like a Summer movie more than a Christmas one (though Greystoke would have been ideal for an Oscar qualifying Christmas run had Hugh Hudson got it ready in time because of its more Autumnal/prestige feel). Again, as with Beyond, Tarzan's problem was less the date than Warners giving up on it. Had they really believed in the picture (which needn't have meant spending more marketing money, just not having the execs try to distance themselves from it so obviously that the press smelled blood in the water that wasn't really there) and not just left it to sell itself, they could easily have got that extra $80m. Imagine what the studio going confidently into opening weekend could have done for that first weekend, with the WOM giving it the same kind of percentage holds from a much stronger start. That really could have been a $65-75m opener.

The one I'd have moved was The Nice Guys - that's the kind of film that may have worked as a late Summer film in the 80s but was just doomed to get lost in early Summer now. It's the kind of film that thrives in the Fall.




"Security - release the badgers."

Fantastic Beasts + Tarzan - switch each either out, I think would have been more beneficial for Tarzan since even with less then mediocre reviews it still did well. I think Tarzan could have gained another 80M WW gross.

I agree with this. The Harry Potter franchise has done very well with the July release date.

TEAM CAP

Yes, but Harry Potter has also performed consistently well in its Fall release dates as well.

Perhaps swap Storks with Kubo and the Two Strings.

Anything that could have given that film a bit of a better chance to be 'the only family/animated movie in the market' instead of opening the weekend after Pete's Dragon.

Not to go way off topic, but I think about this for other years too.

If I were the Sony execs...I'd have considered 'being bold' and setting Spider-Man 3 for December 2007 instead of forcing the May date. That way you get an extra 7 months for Raimi to have making a better film, whether it be fine-tuning the script or spending more time in post-production tweaking things, whatever.

I would have liked to see Universal/Marvel essentially give the April 3rd 2009 release of Fast & Furious to The Incredible Hulk. That is another film that needed more work on the script and more time in post.

In 2010...I'd have Inception and Tron: Legacy switch. Tron as the summer film, Inception in that December 'pre-Christmas' release.

In 2014...I would have outright swapped Interstellar and The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. Interstellar would have had a more leggy run with that Titanic/Avatar/Star Wars release date.

Trev mentioned this before, but I suspect if Disney had been the ones to blink, and move Civil War to March, leaving BvS in May, it's more than likely that the studio wouldn't have had to spend the month before release saying 'no, really, this one's actually good!', and topping Iron Man 3 wouldn't have been such a stress.

Genre goodwill from that film also may have benefited BvS, as maybe audiences would have been as hilariously charitable to it's poor quality as they seemed to be for Suicide Squad (comparatively speaking).

Shut it, Love Actually! Do you want me to hole punch your face?

The other really obvious one that most of us called when the first trailer dropped - The BFG moved to Christmas. It would have had to go up against Fantastic Beasts, but it just felt more like a Fall/Christmas movie and out of place in Summer. Of course, like Tarzan and Star Trek Beyond, had it moved to Christmas its overseas take may well have actually gone down with the massive post-Brexit currency devaluations in Europe: certainly with the pound in absolute freefall and the UK government not even remotely interested in doing anything to arrest it, it would return considerably less from its best overseas territory, especially if predictions of £1 = $1 by the end of the year prove on the money.


"Security - release the badgers."