My One Summer Fear is Vanquished

In absolutely fantastic news that for most is absolutely pointless minutia, Sony has moved Edgar Wright's car chase action romance, Baby Driver from August 11 to June 28. This means it has got out of the month that studios tend to use as a dumping ground (much like January) with the idea that people are more interested in vacations and playing at the beach rather than being cooped up in a movie theatre. Actually, even though January has the reputation for being movie drudgery, I'd argue that after the first week of August you tend to be stuck with the bottom feeding mainstream fare of the year outside of a few family friendly gems (last year we got Kubo and the Two Strings and Pete's Dragon in the middle of August).

This relocation makes me think Sony actually has some faith in Baby Driver and will give it a solid marketing push. It also likely means that there are strong chances it will get a legitimate wide release. Wright's last two feature, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and World's End, were August releases and largely considered niche movies.

This likely means this may be the most broad-appealing of Wright's work or the studio just really has confidence in its quality. The action sequences we've seen look top notch and are stunt-driven rather than CGIed. It also has attitude and looks to be very funny.  Before this move. I had been saying this may be Wright's highest grossing movie, and now, that is exactly what Sony is expecting and there will be the work to grab an audience. Last year at the end of June, The Shallows proved to be a solid hit. It looks like that week is now being marked out as a good time to put out a smaller genre movie. Movies like The Shallows and Baby Driver can act as fun little palate cleansers to all the save the world special effect explosion fests that dominate the summer.

I am also personally excited by this move, because it is looking like my movie watching in August will be very minimal. Baby Driver was the one picture that I was really afraid that I will be missing out on its original release. Now, I can happily live with the fact that I will be able to see it. I can accept that I may not be able to have early reviews for August releases like The Emoji Movie, Annabelle 2, and The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature. I am sure the blog and The Movie Breakdown will survive without their reviews. It also means that the only real potential bright spot I see in August now is possibly the small horror flick, Polaroid.