January and February, August and September. These pairs of months might not seem to be related even slightly, but they share a crucial similarity: they are continuously referred to as “dump months” for the movie theater marketplace.
The stigma around the “dump month” has become ingrained in online pop culture. Contrary to popular belief, the issue isn’t inherent to the months themselves, but rather the distribution pattern of the studios.
This problem first came as a result of the downfall of the monopolized studio system which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled as an anti-trust violation in 1948. This decision cast doubt on the once-guaranteed viability of the theatrical model, causing studios to herd their major releases into “more suitable” time periods. The explosive mid-‘70s arrival of the summer blockbuster and the meteoric rise of acclaimed and reliable independent studios worsened this studio-driven myopia. Studios convinced themselves that audiences would refuse to show up to these films, even though this notion has been repeatedly disproved.
January has served as a reliably strong starting point for horror films starting in the 2010s, ranging from the acclaimed such as “Split,” to the despised such as “The Devil Inside.” The weekend surrounding Martin Luther King Jr. Day has seen some terrific performances, with such hits as this year’s musical reboot of “Mean Girls” and, most notably, the outsized performance of “American Sniper” in 2014 which saw an opening of over $100 million for the long weekend and eventually became 2014’s biggest domestic grosser.
February is no stranger to successes either; President’s Day weekend has often proved fertile for massive hits such as “Black Panther.“ Beloved horror favorite “The Silence of the Lambs” saw unprecedented financial and critical success, even going on to awards season glory.
August has often been regarded as the death of the summer movie season, even though “The Fugitive” was huge in 1993 and “The Bourne Ultimatum” closed out its trilogy with a bang in 2007. It wasn’t until “Guardians of the Galaxy’s” incredible run in 2014 that studios began taking advantage of the August corridor after the month-long July blitz. Typical blockbusters like “Suicide Squad,” along with atypical breakouts such as “Crazy Rich Asians” posted fantastic grosses in this former dead zone.
September has existed in an uncomfortable position, situated between the tail end of summer and the start of the lucrative fall-to-holiday stretch. Warner Bros. has staked the post-Labor Day weekend as the premiere for its horror tentpoles ever since the monstrous performance of “It” shattered expectations and records with its $123 million debut.
“Dump months” have been at the forefront of industry discussions in 2024 due to the dire lack of quality releases from studios throughout January and February. The much-publicized success of “Dune: Part Two” represents the first genuinely great performance of the year, though the absence of exceptional box office performances can largely be attributed to strike-related delays and the short-sighted greed of the studios. The overperformances of these films prove that they are not exceptions to the rule, but rather that the rule itself is a fallacy.
Hollywood has done so much unnecessary damage to itself by creating and perpetuating this self-destructive and false narrative of “dump months” being audience poison, and in the end, only Hollywood has the power to reverse that narrative. For the sake of the theaters that need these films to survive and the creatives that have been unfairly shunned because of this stigma, let’s hope that they do.
