If you saw
"Iron Man 3"
in a North American theater this weekend and didn't have its major plot
twist spoiled for you, consider yourself lucky. After all, people in
nearly every movie market around the world got to see the movie a week
before you did.
It's become increasingly common for Hollywood's would-be blockbusters
to open all over the globe before they finally make it to our own shores.
"Iron Man 3"
opened in territories throughout the world on the weekend of April 26
before opening here on May 3. It follows in the footsteps of
Tom Cruise's sci-fi epic "Oblivion," which also opened overseas a week before it opened here on April 19.
"Star Trek Into Darkness" has already opened in some countries, a full two weeks before it opens in North America.
Not long ago, homegrown Hollywood "event movies" like these would
have opened in America first, then abroad. Or they would have opened
everywhere in the world on the same day, a measure that not only created
worldwide hype for the films but also thwarted pirates who might have
taken advantage of the release-date gap to flood a country's streets
with bootleg DVDs from another country where the movie had already
opened. So what changed? Why does Hollywood now make America wait to see
its own movies until after they've premiered throughout the rest of the
world?
More than anything else, the shift reflects how the international
market, once just gravy for Hollywood, has eclipsed the domestic market
as the main source of revenue for mainstream theatrical releases. As big
as last year's "The Avengers" was at home ($623.4 million), it was even
bigger abroad ($888.4 million). Of that foreign total, $185.1 million
came in on the film's overseas opening weekend, which took place a week
before the movie premiered here. So it's no wonder that Disney would
repeat the strategy for "
Iron Man 3."
And the strategy worked. A week ago,
"iron Man 3" beat the foreign opening weekend record
set by "The Avengers," earning $198.4 million. Before a single American
ticketbuyer had seen it, "Iron Man 3" had earned $307.7 million. By
Sunday, when Disney was reporting that the Robert Downey Jr. threequel
had opened here with an enormous $175.3 million, second-weekend grosses
had already driven the international earnings to $504.8 million, for a
global total of $680.1 million. Not bad for ten days' work.
It's certainly reassuring for studios to know that an expensive
blockbuster-hopeful is a hit even before it opens in the U.S. Universal
moved "Oblivion," initially scheduled for summer, to April, setting it
up to grab what it could in the two weeks before "Iron Man 3" opened.
But that meant it also had to open a week earlier overseas. Which was
fine; Tom
Cruise movies routinely perform much better abroad than they do here, which is
why Cruise remains an A-lister despite his modest box office performance in America."Oblivion"
earned only about $70 million in North America in the 14 days before
"Iron Man 3" opened domestically, but by then, it had earned twice as
much overseas. The movie opened with $60.4 million abroad a week before
its American debut netted $57.1 million. As of this weekend,
"Oblivion" has earned $222.8 million worldwide, with two thirds of that coming from foreign markets.
One sign of how important these international early releases have
become is the promotional travel schedules of the stars. They're sent
out to tout their films around the world, often for months at a time,
appearing at red-carpet premieres in multiple countries. By the time it
opens here,
"Star Trek Into Darkness"
will have staged seven such premieres. So in some cases, these
staggered release patterns are just a matter of scheduling around other
factors.
