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Hollywood Summer Movies Worth Hundreds of Millions | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Clumsy (Anton Yelchin), Grouchy (George Lopez) and Vanity (John
Oliver) in “Smurfs 2.” (Columbia Pictures)


Los Angeles- A few years ago, the summer season was not dedicated for movies, except for films with no hopes of success. People, including cinema fans and even the owners of theaters used to invest their summers in long vacations.

However, this tradition changed when the Universal Company first showed “Jaws” by Steven Spielberg in June, a movie featuring swimming amongst sharks on sandy beaches during the summer. Nevertheless, the movie hit theaters in most countries in December, prior to Christmas in some countries and on Christmas day in others.

This experience succeeded in the United States and Canada, and summer shows increased every year, till all countries adopted this concept and planned to screen new movies during the summer.

A new phenomenon

As part of this phenomenon, the summer season has changed, especially in the second half of June; but, these weeks were not sufficient to screen all the movies directed during the year, therefore, they expanded the season to include weeks of May.

With this month’s movies, which were opened or those expected to kick off within the coming days, we can say that the spring has significantly joined the new concept.

This March will host super heroes and monsters, and the summer’s audience is expected to rush to movie theaters just like they would do to watch movies in July or August. Two weeks ago, “Logan” opened in cinemas and dominated the box office with USD82 million.

Another summer-like movie, the “Kong: Skull Island” also opened this week and topped the box office with USD61 million. Apparently, March has become a platform for the greatest movies. The coming week will see the launch of “The Beauty and the Beast”, followed by “Power Rangers” and the eighth version of “Fast and Furious” with a new title “The Fate of the Furious”.

Hollywood’s extension of the summer season has not been a random decision, and merging the spring months with it was a great investment.

“Guardians of the Galaxy 2” will see the light in May, featuring a fictional superhero team with a cat warrior, followed by “Prometheus 2” for a number of people stuck on the same draconian planet.

Before the end of May, we will also see Johnny Depp in a new adventure from his Pirates of the Caribbean movie series. In June, “Wonder Woman” starring Gal Gadot will hit theaters. Its first show will be on the second week of June, followed by “The Mommy” starring Tom Cruise in the third week, who as usual, acted some of the movie’s risky scenes.

July will start with “Spiderman: the return” starring Tom Holland, and has only one week to break records before the launch of “War for the Planet of the Apes” on July 14.

Animated films also have their share in the summer festival in cinemas; “Smurfs: The Lost Village” will kick off in April, followed by “Ballerina”, and the Baby Boss before the end of the month. Many animated movies will be screened in May including “Captain Underpants” and “Despicable Me 3”.

Endless millions

The best part of this year’s cinema festival is the display of new movies with new subjects. War movies are expected to steal the lights. On May 7, “Mine” will kick off featuring a war story from Afghanistan, followed by the “Sand Castle” starring Henry Cavill in his military costume fighting in Iraq in 2003. War Machine is another upcoming 2017 American war film starring Brad Pitt on Afghanistan.

All movies which will be screened this summer are part of a battle for huge budgets. The Hollywood movies for this year reportedly are worth at least USD2.5 billion.