Thursday
Aug122010
Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 7:45PM The Distance for 'Going the Distance' Gets Longer
Here's some refreshing honesty from a movie studio about a swapped release date. The company
is Warner Bros.; the movie is Going the Distance, a Drew Barrymore-Justin Long romantic comedy that looks
wholly predictable.
“Moving to the Labor Day weekend not only allows us to take advantage of the long holiday weekend, but gives us some distance from the other female-driven films releasing in August. Additionally, we have an opportunity to build more awareness and word-of-mouth for a movie we believe has strong appeal for a broad audience.”There's not a fallacy in that statement: It is a long holiday weekend, there are some estrogenated movies this month, and obviously, the longer you talk about something the more awareness it conceivably could gain. So it's not untrue. However...you're smart people and we talk about this all the time: Labor Day weekend is a graveyard, often the worst weekend of the year for the box office. This year could be a different story, thanks to this film, Machete, and The American with George Clooney. That's a better crop than last year's trio of Extract, Gamer, and multi-Razzie winner All About Steve, although none of them are going to be massive hits. I'm still wating for that, by the way. When will a studio recognize the real strategy of releasing a potential blockbuster on a weekend everyone else in town is trained to ignore? If Alice in Wonderland taught us anything it's that a summer hit is a summer hit is a summer hit, even if you release it in March. Or on Labor Day. Won't be Going the Distance, but it will be something one before too many more years pass.
Reader Comments (1)
The studio has decided that August 27th is not a good weekend for the film, and so it's being bumped back to September 3rd. -Panerai Radiomir watches in uk