From the USDemocrazy foreign affairs reporter in Scotland:
People always like to talk about the strong influence of American popular culture abroad, and I can see it here in Scotland. (For instance, USDemocrazy is taking the UK by storm! One of those really small, barely noticeable storms…)
Given my unabashed admiration for the wonders of American culture, particularly the awesomeness of Hollywood, I’ve been slightly let down by the irregularity of movie releases in the UK. Let me explain:
It’s bad enough having to hear from my US friends who watch my favorite TV shows just as the universe had intended… live on television! But to wait weeks after a film is released in the US for it to finally show up in UK cinemas is just torture!
I decided to ask Google why American movies are released on a different date abroad (even in English-speaking countries) after they do in the U.S.
I quickly found out that this is not necessarily always the case. An insightful, but not exactly vetted, answer on Yahoo! Answers informed me that the delay is intentional. Allegedly this generates word-of-mouth ‘buzz’ in the U.S. and helps the movie producers to evaluate the market for their products abroad.
Even British films don’t always get released first in Britain. The movie “Bright Star” about English poet John Keats won’t even be released until November in the United Kingdom, but was released in September in the USA! Preposterous.
This past weekend’s big US blockbuster, “Where the Wild Things Are,” is not even to be released in the UK until December, but “Couples Retreat,” which no one here has heard of, was released overseas quite soon after its release in the US. “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” on the other hand, the final film starring Heath Ledger, came out this past weekend on this side of the pond, well before its Christmas US release date.
Needless to say… I’m confused! The Brits do not like life simple… Not politics, not schools, not religion, not history nor royal lineage… And the anomalies of the film industry just further confound my attempts at understanding life here! Theories on this topic are well appreciated in the comments section!
Enjoy some trailers while theorising…
