Warner Bros. has confirmed that The Losers, which is based on Andy Diggle’s Vertigo comic, has been moved from its original debut date of April 9th to June 4th.  With Fox’s The A-Team opening just a week later on June 11th, the move sets up a box office battle royale between competing teams of highly-trained Special Forces soldiers who find themselves on the wrong side of the law.  Comparisons between these two films were inevitable, but this scheduling move could well end up backfiring for one or both of the films.

Movie scheduling is an art and an extremely difficult one at that.  One of the few ironclad rules that the studios have come up with for this often treacherous process is “Don’t compete with yourself,” and this is the stricture behind the scheduling change for The Losers.  

Warner Bros.’ Avatar-fueled decision to make its Clash of the Titans into a 3-D film via a computer process (see “Clash of the Titans in 3-D”) had consequences.  By opting for 3-D at the last minute, Warners was forced to move back the opening of Clash of the Titans by one week to April 2nd to accommodate the 3-D processing.  This left only a one-week gap between Clash and The Losers, which stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans and Idris Elba.  Warners decided to move The Losers to June for a face-to-face combat with The A-Team, which had long since staked out its June 11th opening date.  This could be a risky move for Warners since The A-Team, thanks to its long exposure on TV, is the far more well-known property, but it could also allow The Losers to steal some of The A-Team’s thunder.