Summer is here and that means blockbusters at the movies, and 2013 is looking a lot like last year as studios lean heavily on franchises, big action, and lots and lots of sequels.
The first day of summer doesn’t officially come until late June; not so with the summer movie season which kicks off the first weekend in May. This year, May starts off the blockbuster season with a doozey: Iron Man 3. In its three weeks of release it has broken opening weekend records in several countries and is on track to make $400 million in its theatrical release. Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby and Star Trek into Darkness have followed suit and had reasonable success as the big movies release. Fast & Furious 2, The Hangover III, Epic, Now You See Me and After Earth should all prove big box office draws for May.
June sees the opening of more family friendly fare (Monsters University, the sequel to 2001’s Monsters Inc.) and also more for the comic fans that are increasingly spending huge sums at the box office: Man of Steel. Despite Superman Return’s mostly successful turn at the box office, it just wasn’t successful enough, and the direction was abandoned in favor of an origin story reboot. The Internship and This is The End fill in the comedy niche for June filmgoers. The latter, a self-aware comedy with an ensemble cast playing themselves, promises to be a postmodern take on the Apocalypse. It stars James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson and Emma Watson. June is a good month for Watson; she also stars in The Bling Ring, a crime drama based on a true story. Directed, written and produced by Sofia Coppola, it opened the Un Certain Regard section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
The kids are still out when July rolls around and the movies are there for them: The Smurfs 2, Despicable Me 2, and Turbo are all set to delight the younger filmgoer, while there’s still plenty of science-fiction and comic stories for the slightly older crowd: The Wolverine continues the summer comic tradition while also filling in another piece in the X-Men: First Class story from Marvel Studios.