In 2018, Disney released the much-awaited spinoff in the Star Wars universe: Solo: A Star Wars Story, based on the character made iconic by Harrison Ford. Despite a blockbuster production and marketing budget, the film went on to severely underperform at the box office. Trade pundits had their favorite theories why this happened, but perhaps the most telling explanation came from Ron Howard, the movie's director. In an interview with Josh Horowitz, the very first reason he attributed the failure to was it's Memorial Day release date. Strategy for theatrical releases of movies encompass several factors, but perhaps none so deliberated upon as the release date. Will the movie clash with a feature in a similar genre? Will a summer release date bode better than a December release? Are all long weekends equal? Hollywood has an abundance of stories where a movie's poor performance is attributed to an ill-chosen release date. In this talk, I try to find the answers by examining patterns in release-date strategy. As we shall see, the results don't always align with conventional wisdom, and that differing factors can make an otherwise excellent choice, an extremely poor one.

1. BOX OFFICE STRATEGY: DO
RELEASE DATES MATTER? PREET SINGH

2. WHERE IT STARTED

3. THE DATASET
‣ TMDB + GROUP LENS ON KAGGLE
‣ 45,462 ROWS X 26 COLUMNS
‣ I ONLY NEEDED RELEASE DATE,
BUDGET, REVENUE.

4. IS MEMORIAL DAY A BAD RELEASE DATE?
JAN DATES
FEB DATES
:
:
DECEMBER DATES
CHRISTMAS DATES
Absolute?
Relative?

5. THINGS I EXPECTED
‣ MAJORITY OF MOVIES RELEASE ON FRIDAYS.
‣ HOLIDAY WEEKENDS MEAN STRICTLY THE FRIDAY PRIOR.

6. NUMBER OF MOVIES BY RELEASE DAY
THINGS I LEARNT:

7. THINGS I EXPECTED ADJUSTED
‣ MAJORITY OF MOVIES RELEASE ON FRIDAYS.
‣ HOLIDAY WEEKENDS MEAN STRICTLY THE
FRIDAY PRIOR.
‣ NO RESTRICTIONS ON WHEN MOVIES ARE
RELEASED - STAR WARS ’77 —>
‣ SEEMINGLY ARBITRARY DECISION
‣ ADJUSTED MY MODEL: MONTHS.

8. TOTAL REVENUE BY MONTH

9. MEAN REVENUE BY MONTH
Mean = 11.25 million

10. MEAN REVENUE BY MONTH + # MOVIES BY MONTH
LET’S BREAK IT DOWN :

11. JANUARY EXPLAINED.

12. WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR
‣ MAY 3RD BEST PERFORMANCE
‣ ONLY WORSE THAN JUNE AND DECEMBER
‣ DEC > MAY? I DON’T BUY IT.
‣ PERFORMANCE GAP TOO SMALL
‣ RISK TOO LARGE
‣ MAY IS NOT ABSOLUTELY WORSE.
‣ MAY IS NOT RELATIVELY WORSE (WRT DEC).
‣ DID RON MEAN RELATIVE TO OTHER STAR WARS MOVIES?

13. STAR WARS UNIVERSE (ONLY THE IMPORTANT ONES)

14. I’VE LEFT OUT SOME MOVIES…

15. STAR WARS UNIVERSE : REVENUE AND BUDGET (ADJUSTED)

16. ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE VS REVENUERevenue(inUS$millions)
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
Rotten Tomatoes score
50 62.5 75 87.5 100

17. SO WHY DID SOLO FAIL?
‣ BACKLASH AGAINST THE LAST JEDI?
‣ TOO SMALL A GAP BETWEEN STAR WARS MOVIES?
‣ LUKEWARM CRITICS REVIEWS?
‣ CINEMATOGRAPHY?
‣ CASTING: ALDEN EHRENREICH WRONG FOR SOLO?
‣ …………………………………….

18. SO WHY DID SOLO FAIL? MY 2 BITS

19. Title Box Office
Release
Date
May 25-28
May 25 -
July 1
Avengers :
Infinity War
$2.048 B
April 27,
2018
$22.45M $67M
Deadpool
2
$785 M
May 18,
2018
$53.8M $145M
Total $76.25M $212M
ONE LAST METRIC

20. Title Box Office Release Date
Aquaman $1.148B Dec 21, 2018
Mary Poppins
Return
$349.5M Dec 19, 2018
Bumblebee $468M Dec 21, 2018
Spiderman: Into
the Spider-Verse
$375M Dec 14, 2018
OK, THIS ONE’S THE LAST METRIC : HOW WOULD CHRISTMAS LOOK?

21. STAY IN TOUCH!
PREET SINGH
preet@enginelitix.ai