Movie Studios Avoid Election Day For Fear Of Getting Upstaged
Movie studios are showing audiences that we are living in unprecedented times. The attention that the upcoming presidential election is expected to receive is enough for major studios to delay the release of feature films during the weekends that precede and succeed Election Day, a first for the industry. Citing fears that many film-goers will stay at home, the studio executives have decided to sit on their hands and wait until the dust settles before their productions make their theatrical debuts.
Campaigns Are Driving Up The Price Of Ads
The fears of a lackluster return on a big-budget production aren’t the only financial concerns that are motivating Hollywood movie studios to avoid releases near Election Day. The political campaigns being run by both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are making ad buys increase as much as 40 percent. Studios are faced with either biting the bullet and paying more for marketing expenses or scaling back their ads to match the budget line.
Anime Don’t Care
Movie studios are also concerned with potential civil unrest associated with Election Day. The insurrection that occurred when Trump and his supporters refused to accept the loss to Joe Biden in 2020 is still fresh in the memory of most of the nation. Studios worry that potential theater audiences will be glued to their televisions and devices from November 5 onward and will likely ignore whatever is debuting on the big screen that weekend.
But the theaters won’t be without at least a handful of new releases for the weekend of November 8. The Best Christmas Pageant Movie Ever will be making its debut, along with the much-anticipated anime feature film Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom that Crunchyroll/Sony haven’t shied away from opening up to theaters immediately following Election Day.
Some Movies Succeed On Election Weekends
Historically, films making their theatrical debut after Election Day have done rather well. Movie studios made a mint in 2012 when the Bond film Skyfall opened to a whopping $88.4 million in domestic box office ticket sales, marking the best opening weekend for a Bond film up to that point. In 2004, the Pixar film The Incredibles fared well during its post-Election Day debut, as did Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Role Models in 2008.
Big Names Getting Out Of The Way
Films impacted by this move from movie studios include Gladiator 2, Wicked, and Moana 2. However, some studio productions have chosen to bump up release dates rather than delay them. This is the case with Venom 3, originally scheduled for the first weekend in November, which debuts in movie theaters more than 10 days before Election Day on October 25.
A Historical Precedent
Going back even further in history, Universal’s The Wolf Man showed that sometimes film audiences would fill theater seats in the wake of unrest and tragedy to have a wonderful distraction. The Lon Chaney Jr. film made its debut shortly after the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, which vaulted the United States into another world war. The film received a great boost during its opening weekend that it otherwise might not have enjoyed had the unthinkable not happened.
