Summer 2011 at the Movies Starts in March?

It use to be that movie-goers had to wait until May for the Summer blockbuster season to kick off, but it would appear this year it starts in March... I wrote a post about a month ago about how many huge movies will be released in 2011 and next Friday is the beginning of an avalanche of big budget movies that will hit screens. Lets take a look at the 4 weeks in cinema following March 4th...

Rango Movie Poster

March 4th sees the release of Rango the new Johnny Depp starring and Gore Verbinski directed animation, Unknown (last weeks No1 movie in the US starring Liam Neeson) and The Adjustment Bureau (the new Matt Damon vehicle).

Battle: LA Movie Poster

March 11th we get Battle: Los Angeles, probably one of the films I’m most excited for this year (it looks huge and wouldn’t look out of place launching May Bank Holiday) and we also get a big new comedy Hall Pass (starring Owen Wilson).

Limitless Movie Poster

March 18th Limitless (the mind-drug enhanced thriller with Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro) and The Lincoln Lawyer starring Matthew McConaughey.

The Eagle Movie Poster

 March 25th we get the new Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson action adventure Faster and the Medieval epic The Eagle.

Sucker Punch Movie Poster

April 1st we get the new Zack Snyder movie Sucker Punch that based on the trailers looks insane!

My point is that within 4 weeks throughout March we will see a selection of movies that only a few years ago could have been most studios tent pole releases for the whole year and now we’re getting them in Spring! Trust me I could keep going every weekend for the rest of the summer and there is a relatively big move being released! You see the above releases already takes us up to April – and in April we start getting Scream 4, Thor & Fast Five. This is all before May!

Is this good? I mean from a customer’s point of view there is a huge selection of the movie to check out, but from the studios point of view there’s a hell of a lot of competition and there’s only so much wallet share to go around, so we’re either going to end up with a lot a of movies performing mediocre or we'll see some big box-office flops. Is there enough space for all these films so close together and in a period when most people aren't use to going to the cinema every weekend for the new big release.

Personally I can’t wait and I’m going to try and see as many of these films as possible, but it’s going to be a mission for mainstream audience (who don’t hunt this stuff out like me) to cut through all the noise these films advertising campaign are going to make whilst drowning each other out.

In addition to writing original content for MoviePush, I link to a lot of articles all over the web through my twitter @rossbishop mainly focused on movies and marketing. If you’re interested and like to keep up to date, please follow me.
.