January 2008 is shaping up to be probably one of the better January’s in recent memory. It was already announced that John Rambo was going to open on the 25th.. but now Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem has moved it’s release date to January 18th. If the date 1-18-08 os ringing a bell, that’s because it’s also the release date for Cloverfield. First big head-2-head battle of the year.
The good folks over at Slashfilm offer up this:
The sequel was originaly slated to hit theaters on December 25th, up against Charlie Wilson’s War, The Great Debators and The Water Horse, but more importantly Sweeney Todd, National Treasure 2 and Walk Hard, all of which open the previous Friday (December 21st). So you can see why they made the move. But pitting AvsP2 up against the much hyped JJ Abrams produced top secret monster flick Cloverfield, doesn’t seem like the best idea for everyone involved. And besides, isn’t Fanboys coming out the same weekend too? Three geek targeted flicks in one weekend feels a little bit overcrowded to me.
There are a couple of schools of thought here.
1) Fox feels they can cash in on a high geek weekend ALONG with the other films
or…
2) Fox may know something we don’t know. Perhaps Cloverfield is a lemon and they’re moving to take advantage of that?
Personally… and remember this is JUST A THEORY…. I think #2 is what’s going on. I haven’t been 1/10th as impressed as everyone else with the Cloverfield stuff at all. What have they shown us to get excited about? Nothing. It’s all 100% hype at this point. That first trailer not showing a title was a GREAT marketing device… but aside from that there wasn’t anything special about it at all.
Now here we are just 4 months from the release date and they still haven’t shown us anything. I understand there is probably a marketing reason for that… I really do… HOWEVER… I’m starting to suspect this whole movie is going to be a lemon. I hope like hell that I’m wrong, cause I love my giant monster movies… but we’ll wait and see.
So who will win the bigger audience that weekend? AVP2 or Cloverfield?
**UPDATE** Fox is now saying the change of date is not in North America. Here it still still opens on December 25th
