Boiling Point: Hollywood Horror Releasing Still Wrong
Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 31, 2009
I’ve raged against this in the past, but feel the urge to do it again with the recent release of both Halloween 2 and The Final Destination. Hollywood just doesn’t seem to get releasing horror movies. I mean, is it really that difficult? They’ve nailed down Holiday movies. Cue up Thanksgiving weekend and you get 5 weeks to run Christmas and Holiday movies. The earliest Christmas movie is five weeks out, which is a bit lengthy, but they run Christmas movies run up until, duh, Christmas. Hollywood also nailed down summer movies. Big action movies that generally take place outside during the summer months. Look at Transformers – that definitely isn’t the inside of some building or a movie about the leaves changing colors. Summer movie.
But then we come to horror, the misunderstood yet money-making genre of them all. Even shitty horror movies with shitty budgets turn profits. It’s pretty easy for a horror movie to pick up $15 million in its theatrical lifetime, and considering their limited budgets, that’s generally a good investment. What if I told you that I could take that exact same movie and instead of making $15million, make $30? I’ve got the solution – release it closer to Halloween. I mean, for fuck’s sake it’s only August! Then comes September! Then all of October hits before Halloween. Why are these movies coming out two months before the perfect date? Halloween is called Halloween! How obvious is that releasing? Saw flicks dominate Halloween right now, not because they’re good (they’re not, they’re awful) but because when Halloween is near people want to see a horror movie. You slap a Halloween franchise movie in October, sometime between say the 16th and the 31st, and you’re going to make bank. The Final Destination I’ll cut some slack to, as its not exactly a horror movie, but a sort of action-death film.
So how badly has the pooch been screwed this year when it comes to horror? Let’s take a look here. In August we had The Final Destination and Halloween 2. In September we have Sorority Row (11th), Jennifer’s Body (18th), Pandorum (25th). Then in October we have Zombieland (2nd) and The Stepfather (16th). The following week is the 23rd, which I’ll call as close enough to Halloween and we get Cirque de Freak and Saw #WhoGivesAShit. So between August and Halloween we have nine horror movies, 7 of which are released between 2 weeks and 2 months before the money weekend – Halloween. What is that bullshit?
I’m a big horror fan, obviously, and will watch them whenever and however, but even I get psyched up for a horrific weekend come Halloween and what do I get in theaters every year? Saw? Fucking shit. I’m better off staying at home watching AMC’s Monster Madness or some Sci-Fi (SyFy?) channel marathon, or just pulling 12 movies out of my collection. Clearly Hollywood isn’t going to wise up anytime soon and give me the sweet red stuff on the appropriate weekend. No, instead we’ll continue to watch Halloween movies in August and February. AWESOME. It’s also worth noting that before it was pushed, Shutter Island was scheduled to hit October 2nd. How cool would it have been to get a seriously budgeted horror flick with a serious cast and a serious director on Halloween? Also, let’s remember I didn’t rewind the clock and go back to this summer, where we had movies like The Collector and Drag Me to Hell, both of which would have played great in late October. So until Hollywood gets its horror-shit together, I’ll no doubt be sitting in front of my Blu-ray player watching horror and slashing my boiling point.
Can’t get enough of Robert Fure’s rants? Get them in real time on twitter: Twitter.com/RejectRobert. Also, check out the Boiling Point Archive.
Read more articles by Robert Fure
