Well that didn’t take long. Only yesterday we reported that Spider-man 4 had officially been delayed because of disagreements between director Sam Raimi and the studio over who should be the villain, and now comes news (via Variety) that everyone else in Hollywood has been quick to rearrange their schedules to take advantage of this.
Spidey’s early May release date (it was due out on May 6th, 2011) is seen as one of the best of the year for big movies, and so Thor has decided to move itself up two weeks from May 20th to take over the now vacant May 6th date. With the also pretty good release date of May 20th then left empty, it seems Disney has now set its sights on that one for Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which previously didn’t have an official release announced.
Although all this shuffling may seem a bit silly for what would only be a matter of a couple of weeks, where you place your film during the summer schedule is seen as vital to how much money the movie will make and so studios are always jockeying for the best slot. In fact it’s almost seen as a science, with each weekend of the year ranked for how good studios think it is to release a film. This is why studios often announce a release date before they’ve even hired writers, because they want to snap up a coveted spot several years in advance, before anyone else can lay claim to it.
Of course, all this still leaves Spidey 4 up in the air, and it now looks like that film won’t arrive until late summer 2011 at the earliest.