The Latest Date Changes 2: The New Batch

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Kirk Cameron and The Kendrick Brothers teamed up on a new film that Fathom Events, seemingly inspired by the success of Christmas with The Chosen, is giving a full wide release. Lifemark opens on September 9th and it's probably pretty easy to figure out what it's about.

Meanwhile, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Christmas with The Chosen 2 got announced at some point.

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Disappointment Blvd. has a confirmed final run time of three-and-a-half hours. That might limit how many theatres choose to run it.

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Robert Zemeckis's Pinocchio hits Disney+ on September 8th.

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Secret Headquarters is pivoting to a Paramount+ release. My full year slate is already in fucking shambles.

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Paramount hasn't been making much sense lately. This and Jerry and Marge Go Large are Paramount+ titles but Smile is going to theatres. But I guess you can do that when 80's Nostalgia: Jingoism Harder makes millions.

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Pulling intended theatrical titles doesn't really make sense, especially when they've put out 5 of the top 15 highest grossing movies of the year so far. Jerry and Marge Go Large is a bit of a different case since it was always designed to be a Paramount+ release.

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But you'd think that a film with a pair of Oscar nominees that have name recognition in the leads, especially one that's a comedy, would at least get a small release in some markets where you could bring in older audiences. And Top Gun, though an action film, showed you can play older. So why does it feel like all of the movies aimed towards the over 45 crowd are going to streaming?

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But you'd think that a film with a pair of Oscar nominees that have name recognition in the leads, especially one that's a comedy, would at least get a small release in some markets where you could bring in older audiences. And Top Gun, though an action film, showed you can play older. So why does it feel like all of the movies aimed towards the over 45 crowd are going to streaming?

You kind of answered your own question. Until Top Gun, every single film aimed at that demographic that's been released in the past year has either underachieved or straight-up bombed. Considering studios tendency to be impulsive and reactionary, that means we're going to see more titles aimed at these crowds' debut on streaming services in at least the immediate future. The irony of this strategy is that people from this demographic also don't stream as much as others (case in point, Cry Macho put up some, if not the absolute worst HBO Max streaming numbers of the titles from Warner's 2021 day-and-date slate).

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What killed Cry Macho is that there was almost no marketing for it. Nothing Warner Bros. seems to do nowadays seems to make any sense and the decision to release a film into nearly 4,000 theatres with a non-existent ad campaign is an example of that. Yes, the film was considered somewhat subpar for Eastwood but had we seen a trailer or anything at least a few months before opening (I didn't see a single trailer until the day before it opened), it might have fared better.

When I go to a movie nowadays, it seems like the audience is going to be older than younger. Recently, I went to a showing of The Duke that was sold out and filled with a much older audience. A while back, I went to a theatre in St. Louis and though reasonably high-profile indie films like Pig and Roadrunner were playing, the big moneymaker was an Ellen Burstyn film called Queen Bees, which did a reasonable $2 million while being totally under the radar. There's a theatrical market for movies beyond the 18-49 crowd. It's just the distributors aren't trying to sell said movies the audience.

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The Man from Toronto hits Netflix on June 24th. I guess we can see if Sony made the right decision to dump this one.

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Anything's Possible is officially the first straight to streaming causality of Amazon's MGM takeover. It will release on Prime on July 22nd.

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Yeah, I figured that would have been a hard movie to promote to a mainstream audience. Billy Porter is a name to some but not someone who can open a movie.

The biggest comparison might be Everybody's Talking About Jamie, which Disney planned as a big awards movie before selling it to Amazon, where it was immediately forgotten (did anyone remember this ever coming out?).

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The Princess, a teaming between 20th Century and Neal H. Moritz of Fast Saga fame, hits Hulu on July 1st. I could easily see this ending up on some end-of-the-year worst lists.

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Janus Films has picked up Tori and Lokita, one of the more notable Cannes films that left the festival without a US distributor. A Criterion release is expected after its theatrical run ends.

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New dates:
Fall 8/12/22
E.T. IMAX Re-Release 8/12/22
Jaws IMAX Re-Release 9/2/22