Usually, in a given weekend, multiple studios compete against each other at the box office with their new movies. But something rare is happening this weekend, as one major studio will be competing against ITSELF.
20th Century Fox is releasing two new movies on the same day, or rather, evening – this Thursday: “Alien: Covenant” and “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul”. They make-up two of the three big new films for the weekend (“Everything, Everything” from Warner Bros. is the third).
Fox has come close to this scenario before. This past December, they released “Assassin’s Creed” on Wednesday the 21st and the comedy “Why Him?” on Friday the 23rd. But as far as two new wide releases from the same studio opening on the same day, this is something that the six major studios (Fox, WB, Disney, Universal, Paramount and Sony/Columbia) have hardly ever done.
The last time this happened was Dec. 21, 2012 when Paramount opened both “Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away” and the Tom Cruise action film “Jack Reacher”. And the previous occasion: Dec. 8, 2006. Warner Bros. opened both Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Blood Diamond” and the holiday family comedy “Unaccompanied Minors”.
So this has only occurred three times in the past 10 and a half years. Will it happen again soon? As of now, not during the rest of 2017. As for next year, Fox does have “Alita: Battle Angel” and an untitled animated feature scheduled for July 20 – but it’s likely one of them, if not both, will move sometime between now and then.