Ben-Hur release date gets bumped to a later week in August

Uh-oh. Deadline is reporting that the new version of Ben-Hur — which was once going to come out February 26 — has been bumped from its August 12 release date.

The film will now open a week later, on August 19.

This is worrying if Ben-Hur is meant to be any sort of wide release, as the last weeks of summer are generally regarded as something of a dead zone for mainstream films.

A number of films have done very well in the first two weeks of August in recent years, but it has proved a lot harder to find an audience in the second half of the month.

Here are the best second-half-of-August openings so far:

• Inglourious Basterds (Aug 21, 2009) — $38.1 million opening — $120.5 million total
• Superbad (Aug 17, 2007) — $33.1 million opening — $121.5 million total
• The Expendables 2 (Aug 17, 2012) — $28.6 million opening — $85 million total
• The Final Destination (Aug 28, 2009) — $27.4 million opening — $66.5 million total
• Halloween (Aug 31, 2007) — $26.4 million opening — $58.3 million total
• Lee Daniels’ The Butler (Aug 16, 2013) — $24.6 million opening — $116.6 million total
• Mortal Kombat (Aug 18, 1995) — $23.3 million opening — $70.5 million total
• The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Aug 19, 2005) — $21.4 million opening — $109.4 million total
• Takers (Aug 27, 2010) — $20.5 million opening — $57.7 million total
• The Last Exorcism (Aug 27, 2010) — $20.4 million opening — $41 million total
• Exorcist: The Beginning (Aug 20, 2004) — $18.1 million opening — $41.8 million total
• Hero (Aug 27, 2004) — $18 million opening — $53.7 million total

And so on. Only four films on this list grossed over $100 million — a Tarantino film starring Brad Pitt, a couple of early Judd Apatow hits, and The Butler — and I can find only twelve films released at this time of year that grossed even $60 million.¹

(The other $60-million-plus grossers are The Expendables 2, The Final Destination, Mortal Kombat, The Cell, Bring It On, Blade, War Room and Uncle Buck.)

I don’t know what the budget was on Ben-Hur, but I have to imagine that the people behind this film were hoping it would be a bigger hit than most of those films.

Granted, the August 12 weekend was already looking pretty crowded with potentially big competitors like the R-rated animated film Sausage Party and Disney’s remake of Pete’s Dragon. In its new August 19 release date, Ben-Hur’s main competition will be the war comedy War Dogs and the animated film Kubo and the Two Strings.

Still, the fact that the studio blinked may not be the greatest vote of confidence in the film. Here’s hoping it turns out better than its release date seems to indicate.

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1. For comparison’s sake: in 2014, the “year of the Bible movie”, Noah grossed $101.2 million, while Son of God and Exodus: Gods and Kings both grossed around $60 million, give or take.