Film studios are fucking idiots.
I live in England so sometimes i get films a week or two after America and maybe once in a while i get films a week or two earlier than America, however recently the difference in release dates between a film in America and England is downright appalling, let me give you one good example – Wreck it Ralph.
Wreck it Ralph was released in America on 2nd November, England does not get it until 8th February. Now if England was China or Japan, where maybe dubs and subtitles need to be produced and synced up, i could maybe, just maybe forgive it, however we are not. England has the same language as America, so no alterations to the film would have to be made, so why the fuck do i have to wait 3 months to watch a film which no doubt is going to be great. Disney have fucked themselves out of my money for doing this because it is unreasonable for Disney to expect people who are knowledgable and keep updated on what happens in the film industry to wait 3 months to watch their film.
Disney have also done this once before in 2012 with Brave, although it wasn’t as much of a gap (22nd June US, 13th August UK) but it just shows that film companies do not give a fuck about foreign markets when most of their box office revenue comes from overseas markets.
Disney however are not the only studio that does this, every single studio does this, sometimes delaying releases in England by a month or more. This is downright ridiculous.
This is why i am going to illegally download Wreck it Ralph to watch and review and if i enjoy the film enough, i might purchase it on Blu-Ray. This is also why i am going to download, to name a few; Zero Dark Thirty (US – 19th December, UK – 25th January), Les Misérables (US – 25th December, UK – 11th January), Lincoln (US – 16th November, UK -25th January) and Flight (US -2nd November, UK – 1st February).
I do not normally illegally download films, i either stream them through Netflix, watch them on TV or own them on Blu-Ray. In some cases studios will send me review discs or if a review is in demand i will rent the film. However, people in the UK and other countries where film studios fuck us on release dates, i urge you to pirate the films that haven’t been released in your country yet, if enough of us do this the studios will take a hit and might rethink their strategy, you have nothing to lose.
On a final note to film studios, i genuinely don’t understand why release dates are so often different between countries with English as their language, you could say that it is just for Oscar buzz, but Life of Pi, Argo and The Hobbit have all been released around the same time in the US and UK, not affecting their box office and not hurting the film at all, i paid to watch those films, if you would release films globally within a better time frame i would pay to watch your films.