New Line and Warner Bros.
‘The Conjuring 2′
More fallout from Fox’s musical chairs! This time, New Line and Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. have shifted their James Wan-produced Conjuring Universe offering, The Nun, from July 13 to Sept. 9 of this year. So, Dwayne Johnson’s Skyscraper can breathe a bit easier, as can Adam Sandler���s Hotel Transylvania 3. This move now means that the Taissa Farmiga/Demián Bichir/Bonnie Aarons Conjuring spin-off is laying a claim to possibly dominate the month of September. And WB is calling that early September release date all for itself.

As you surely know, Warner Bros. rewrote the release date rulebook last September when they opened It to $123 million on one of the slowest/lousiest weekends on the calendar. Considering that the month of September is comparatively lightweight this year, they may just have something resembling a leggy run. That’s not to say there aren’t big-ish movies in the ninth month of the year. Fox’s The Predator could break out, Night School (with Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish) is likely to unsurprisingly surprise and Lionsgate’s Robin Hood may… well, fingers crossed and all.
The date switch for the “evil nun” chiller gets it away from Blumhouse and Universal/Comcast Corp.’s The First Purge which opens on July 4th. This makes The Nun the last horror movie from Sept. 9 until Oct. 12, when it faces off against Sony’s Goosebumps 2 and CBS Films’ Hellfest. Okay, since I’m picking on Lionsgate’s Robin Hood reboot, I will also say that Hellfest (opening Oct. 12 courtesy of Lionsgate and CBS Films) has one of the coolest loglines* of 2018. If it’s even half as good as its synopsis then Paddington 2 and Teen Titans GO to the Movies! may have some serious Oscar competition next year.

No, I’m not sure whether to count Venom as a horror movie, although that way-too-early teaser trailer was scary in all the wrong ways. If The Nun ends up anywhere near the $255 million+ totals of the first four Conjuring movies (let alone the $300m+ totals of Conjuring, Conjuring 2 and Annabelle: Creation), it’ll will take a surprisingly robust Predator or a peak-performance Night School to cost the horror spin-off the arbitrary monthly crown.
This means, with It in 2017, The Nun in 2018 and It Chapter 2 in 2019, New Line is planting a flag in one of the worst release dates and making it all a-golden. If the industry is going to thrive with this whole year-round tentpole/franchise/blockbuster schedule, that’s exactly what needs to happen, with studios taking chances launching big movies on risky weekends. Now if someone could drop a biggie in that famously barren post-Thanksgiving slot, we’d be all set.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if there is any more fallout from Fox shifting Alita: Battle Angel to December and moving The Predator to September. Oh, and they dated another Blue Sky release (Foster) for March 21, 2021, so I guess Ferdinand made enough ($275 million worldwide on a $111m budget) to justify more Blue Sky movies even if Disney or Comcast ends up owning Fox. But that’s a conversation for another day.
*A costumed killer enters a seasonal horror theme park on Halloween night and begins murdering with impunity in front of crowds of visitors who believe that his actions are all part of the show.If you don’t want to see that movie, squeamish moviegoers excepted, you’re a bad person and I don’t want to k