If there’s any month of the year that regularly inspires dread for moviegoers across the planet, it’s January. This month on the calendar hasn’t just been home to a few flops over the years, it’s become synonymous with being a “dump month” where studios can burn off less than desirable motion pictures. This connotation isn’t even just a concept passed around by film geeks, it’s become notable enough to garner a name drop in a December 2014 Saturday Night Live sketch. But how did January get this reputation? And could, perhaps, Hollywood manage to turn around January’s image?
January being a destination for less than quality fare can largely be chalked up to the months that precede it. Coming right off November and December, usually home to holiday season blockbusters and award season fare, January is seen as a cooling-off point for studios and moviegoers alike. While everyone catches their breath from a deluge of major releases, it’s the perfect opportunity for projects that wouldn’t be able to catch on anywhere else in the year to grace movie theaters. It doesn’t help that the month has always just naturally been home to smaller box office performers, with only two titles ever managing to crack $60 million on their wide release opening weekend in January.
January really did release some all-time bad movies. Rather than being a home for works that were too challenging to be appreciated right away, the list of the biggest movies ever released in January is bound to send chills up a cinema devotee’s spine. The Devil Inside. 27 Dresses. Meet the Spartans. Snow Dogs. That 2021 remake of The Grudge. The list goes on and on. Given how often the dearth of competition led to these titles becoming lucrative at the box office, Hollywood kept shoveling out lowest-common-denominator projects in January. Quality projects couldn’t emerge in this release corridor given the unbreakable cycle the month was trapped in.
Further hurting January’s chances of being seen as a viable month for launching new releases was how often titles in this month had to compete with big award season movies expanding into wide release. Projects ranging from 1917 to Hidden Figures to Million Dollar Baby all launched in limited release at Christmas before going into theaters everywhere in January to capitalize on award season buzz. This strategy worked great for those films but left total newcomers in January struggling to grab the attention of moviegoers or screen space. It wasn’t impossible to launch a mid-range hit in January but having to work in the shadow of these expanding award season players certainly compounded the inherent challenges of dropping a movie in this month.
However, some hope has begun to flourish for January, at least in terms of the box office muscle it can exert, thanks to Hollywood's new scheduling approach of putting blockbusters in every corridor of the year. Now that It can make superhero movie money opening just one week after Labor Day weekend or Joker can exceed $1 billion worldwide after dropping in early October, all bets are off in terms of where successful movies can debut. This, combined with the fractured modern release schedule incurred by the effects of COVID-19, has led to Hollywood assuming any time of the year can be a successful launchpad for would-be blockbusters.
January finally got to prove its mettle in this regard through the 2020 feature Bad Boys for Life, which became the first non-American Sniper title to open to over $60 million domestically. A box office threshold movies released in May or June can easily surpass in a single day, this box office achievement upended all conventional wisdom over the box office possibilities of January releases. Even better, Bad Boys for Life garnered solid reviews by any measure and practically unanimous praise compared to the critical responses that greeted usual January releases.
Unfortunately, the same month that Bad Boys was blazing new trails for January titles, the norms for the month’s cinema were upheld in other ways. Fellow January 2020 projects like Dolittle and The Turning (both of which had been extensively delayed from their original release dates and suffered troubled productions) still reaffirmed that January was largely seen as a dumping ground by Hollywood studios. Meanwhile, COVID-19 shutting down movie theaters two months later ensured that January 2021 (which was devoid of new wide releases save for The Marksman and The Little Things) wouldn’t have a chance to even try to continue this upswing for January projects.
But Hollywood hasn’t given up on launching major projects in January now that Bad Boys for Life has shown what’s possible for this month. Bad Boys distributor Sony/Columbia Pictures has scheduled two major projects for January 2023, Kraven the Hunter and Harold and the Purple Crayon, an indication that this studio is looking to make January a new go-to haven for its tentpoles. Meanwhile, Universal has set a mid-January date in 2024 for an untitled event film, a sign that the concept of January no longer being a dumping ground has spread to other studios.
The flashes of confidence movie studios have in January seem to have been reinforced by how, even during the pandemic, it’s become apparent that hit movies can emerge from anywhere. Just look at how Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings shattered all box office records for a Labor Day release during the Delta Variant phase of this health crisis. Clearly, moviegoers showing up for appealing theatrical releases no matter what month it is hasn’t changed even with the Earth-shattering effects of the pandemic. Thus, studios have remained committed to challenging the norms of what constitutes a “January” release.
It doesn't hurt that there are also simply too many blockbusters being produced now for them all to fit into the traditional month's studios used to solely open such titles in. Unleashing all of these titles in the summertime and the final two months of the year would just result in everyone getting trampled. Thus, studios have to let out big swings by taking a chance on debuting films in months like January. After all, the only other option is to either dwindle down the number of blockbusters major American studios make or attempt to compete directly against major Marvel and DC Comics movies, neither of which appear to be likely developments.
Only time will tell if January can eventually fully eschew its classic reputation as a dumping ground in favor of just being seen as another month on the calendar to launch box office hits. The recent box office success of Scream certainly indicates that the pandemic hasn't stifled the ability of January movies to overperform. Given this development, it's no surprise that studios appear committed to this release corridor in the future. If that commitment stays intact and produces more hits like Scream and Bad Boys for Life, then the days of January being seen as a “dump month” could become a thing of the past.