Film distributors, which in the past have found room for their classier, adult-oriented fare on a relatively uncrowded winter release schedule, are suddenly facing a glut of ambitious pictures fighting for space in theaters and audience attention.
In other words, January is beginning to look a lot like July in the movie business.
The pileup appears to have occurred largely because mainstream studios such as Sony Corp.'s Columbia Pictures and Walt Disney Co.'s Touchstone unit are aggressively playing a year-end game of Oscar positioning that was once left largely to Disney's specialty arm, Miramax Films, and smaller independent distributors. Hollywood's upscale films also have been squeezed by some surprisingly strong "popcorn" pictures, including Warner Bros.' "Kangaroo Jack," Columbia's "National Security" and 20th Century Fox's "Just Married," all of which opened this month.
In all, 34 pictures are scheduled for release this January, up 42% from 24 films a year earlier.
"It's not just that it's crowded," said Jack Foley, distribution chief for the Focus Features unit at Vivendi Universal, which has "The Pianist" and "Far From Heaven" in current release.
"For the first time, the big studios have broken in with this volume of high-end films.... It's a different land of the giants," Foley said.
Virtually every major studio is now mimicking a time-tested Miramax strategy, which involves releasing one or more sophisticated niche films as late as possible in December to qualify for the Oscars and other prizes, then expanding to more theaters in January and February as the awards season builds. In the past, Miramax used that pattern to make a success out of pictures such as "Chocolat," "Shakespeare in Love" and "The English Patient."
Similarly, USA Films took in $124 million at the box office with "Traffic" by taking that tack in 2001, while Sony Pictures Classics that same year used the winter months to rack up $128 million in ticket sales for its "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
But this year's crush may make it difficult for any picture to achieve critical mass in the marketplace.
"It will be hard for any single film to break from the pack and become a phenomenon," suggested Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co.
Although the year's large array of pictures is pushing up marketing budgets and raising the specter of box-office cannibalization, it has provided a feast for audiences.
