January is also seen as a month where all the bad films drop. Films that have already been deemed as flops by the studios are given a release at the start of the year so that they’ll quickly be forgotten by the year’s end.
So why is it that January sees no major releases, and is January really a dumping ground for all of Hollywood’s waste?
Well, the summer is normally the time for big-budget superhero fare, and animated family films that bring in loads of visitors and rake in the money, and Christmas sees lots of festive offerings. These serve as major attractions for families during the school holidays.
But in January, everyone’s back to work and school again. Money’s tight since it was all blown on Christmas presents, it’s still bloody cold and you’re not sure whether you want to trek to the cinema to waste your money on something that might not be good.
It’s also the awards season soon and typically by this point it’s too late to have met the eligibility requirements, so studios think it’s OK to release their second-rate movies that they knew would never walk away with a participation trophy, never mind an Oscar. A lot of the big December releases will also be holding on strong (in 2024 Wonka was still high in the box-office charts), so studios won’t want to harm their gross by releasing anything else.
So that’s the why. Is it true that everything released in January is weak? No. Far from it.
Here in the UK, we find ourselves getting the films that are Oscar contenders in January. For instance in January 2024 we got Poor Things, Priscilla and The Holdovers despite America getting them in 2023. This wasn’t just last year though - previous Januarys have given us Whiplash, Moonlight, Parasite and many more. For a film buff, January can be heaven for seeing all these films by auteur directors. It can also be a month of hidden gems - for instance, I didn’t expect much from The End We Start From with Jodie Comer and I ended up loving it.
Is there some truth to the theory? Admittedly, yes. For the horror genre, January is usually pretty dismal with 2024 offering us the mediocre Baghead and the laughable Night Swim. And yes it’s true that there’s no new $250 million superhero film to gawk at. But when the nights are still dark and the cinemas still quiet, I find myself popping down to Tyneside Cinema and seeing some truly strange January releases. And who knows? With Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu coming on New Year’s Day, even the horror films this time round might be pretty good.