The summer movie season is to Hollywood studios what the holiday season is to most retailers with at least 40% of the annual box office revenue realized between the first of May and Labor Day. With the box office dollars down 14% through the first four months of the year, studios really need a stronger showing during the next four months, particularly since the home video market is also slumping with DVD sales of new titles down 19% in the first quarter.

 

Movie ticket prices, which have been steadily progressing upwards for years, actually fell during the first quarter from $8.01 to $7.56 primarily because of the lack of major 3-D hits during the period something that the studios are hoping won’t be the case this summer. Starting with Marvel Studios’ Thor, which debuts this coming weekend, and the manhwa-based Priest, which bows on May13th, there will be a steady progression of extra-dimensional films that will fetch premium ticket prices and inflate grosses. While Mars Needs Moms and Hoodwinked! Too were abject 3-D flops, their failures don’t necessarily mean that the format itself has fallen into disfavor with audiences.

 

 

Hollywood played it safe this summer with a surfeit of sequels. Fast Five, the first of many Tinseltown replays, was hugely successful, debuting to over $86 million the best number yet for the entire franchise. Universal was very clever with Fast Five, reuniting the original cast of The Fast and the Furious, adding a charismatic star in Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and most cleverly turning the street racing franchise into a “caper film.”

 

Will Disney score a similar success with Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which debuts on May 26th? This latest POC film is the first to be based on a solid literary source, Tim Power’s fantasy pirate novel, which could give a series that has depended almost entirely on the delightfully eccentric acting of Johnny Depp, some added depth.

 

There appears to be much less tampering with the successful formula with the two sequels that open on May 26th, the R-rated comedy The Hangover: Part II, and the animated Kung Fu Panda 2. The latter is Dreamworks’ most successful (critically and financially) animated feature outside of Shrek, while the former is the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time.

 

Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class, which bows on June 3rd, is much more of a major reboot of the franchise. Vaughn takes the X-Men saga back to the origins of the Xavier/Magneto feud in the 1960s in what could be, thanks to the popularity of the previous X-Men films, the safest superhero bet of the summer.

 

An even safer bet is Cars 2 from Pixar that debuts on June 24th. Nobody has ever created better sequels than Pixar’s Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3, so the hopes are high for the Cars sequel, especially since the original 2006 film has been a stealth heavyweight in movie merchandising, racking up sales of over a billion dollars.

 

Cars 2 will be followed a week later by the release of Michael Bay’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third film in the toyetic robot series. Bay admits that the second Transformers movie was “crap,” and promises this one will better—will audiences care? They flocked to the second movie anyway.

 

Two weeks later comes the eighth and final Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two. Simply put, the Harry Potter franchise has been the most consistently successful long-running live-action series in movie history and there is no reason to believe that the final film will tarnish the series’ image.

 

Much more problematic is Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which debuts on August 5th. This “prequel” looks to revive the vintage movie franchise with state-of-the-art realistic ape special effects courtesy of the Weta Workshop. Is realism what the fans of Planet of the Apes are looking for?

 

There are plenty of other sequels of less interest such as the horror film Final Destination 5 (August 12th) and the children’s movie Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World (August 19th), but the most intriguing late summer sequel is the new Conan the Barbarian, which debuts on August 19th. There’s a lot riding on this attempt to reboot the Conan franchise including sequels and a possible Red Sonja film.

 

 

The major studio gambles of the summer are all attempts to create new franchises. Starting with Thor this weekend it should be possible to judge how audiences react to the studio’s attempt to create new superhero franchises. Since Thor debuted successfully overseas last weekend, it appears more likely that the summer’s first big gamble will pay off, but we won’t really know the answer until this time next week.

 

Warner Bros. Green Lantern, which bows on June 17th, is an even bigger role of the dice. For one thing it is a far more expensive film with production costs reportedly over $200 million even before the studio decided to double down by spending an additional $9 million on special effects (see “Warners Doubles Down on Green Lantern”). Because of lagging special effects work, the studio has been unable to market the film in the usual fashion, but now that the effects shots are available, expect a major promotional effort since Warner Bros. has a huge investment in Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern movie.

 

Marvel Studios’ other superhero release of the summer is also new to the big screen. Captain America: The First Avenger bows on July 22nd. With uncertain prospects abroad, the star-spangled hero will have to perform well here in the States to insure success. The first major Captain America film is an “origin” movie set during World War II, which might put off some younger fans, but Cap is one of the most relatable of superheroes and shouldn’t ever be counted out of a competition.

 

Dreamworks’ comic book-based Cowboys and Aliens, which bows on July 29th, might be even a riskier bet than Green Lantern since the property has no built-in base of comic book fans, and the cowboy/alien invasion genre mash-up is the most original genre combination of the summer and it’s difficult to predict how audiences will react. A strong cast headed by Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford and an experienced director in Jon Favreau may be the best things Cowboys and Aliens has going for it.