'Final Destination 4' Goes Head-to-Head with 'H2'

Here's a curious move: New Line Cinema has moved Final Destination: Death Trap 3-D back two weeks, so it will now be released on August 28th. So what? Who cares? Probably Rob Zombie and the Halloween sequel, H2, which was already scheduled to open on the 28th. Huh? Two horror movies on the same weekend? How will that work? Well, to begin with, it won't. At least not for one of them. I mean, this is just stupid. These movies are vying for the same audience. I'd say that, all things being equal, better than three-fourths of the Final Destination crowd would see Halloween. Because of Zombie's devoted fans, I'm not sure the exchange would work the same going the other way, but the point is, genre movies aren't positioned against competition within that same genre for a reason: It poisons the well. At best, one of these movies will open well. At worst, one will open with a significantly lower audience and one won't be that big a hit at all out of the gate. And if you had to pick a loser in this scenario, I'd lean to Final Destination. The 3-D release is a little bit of a hindrance and I'm just not sure it has as much momentum as Halloween. Having said that, the first two movies - and particularly the second one - had much more ingenuity than Zombie's first Halloween, so maybe New Line is just that confident in the fourth movie. But it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Comments

[Asana]

From the not a chance in hell department... they could double bill the films at a slightly higher ticket and split the profits. At least that way they could come away with a guaranteed cut of overall sales even if people only stayed for one film. Given the nature of movies being bounced around to different dates though, I'd look for more movie shuffling before release day comes.

[calvinater]

billing H2 and FD4 as a double feature would be sheer genious and a horror fan's dream come true. So, I doubt it'll happen.