Which Hollywood Movies Will Open Overseas Before Playing At Home This Summer? – The 2016 Edition

Hey, have you seen Captain America: Civil War yet? You have?

Uh-huh. Oh, sure, that one scene does sound awesome, and I bet you Tom Holland probably really is a great Spider-Man. What’s that? You say it’s the best Marvel movie of all time if not the best comic movie ever? Well, gosh, that’s swell, but, um, shut up for a second because Civil War only came out in around half the world this weekend. The rest of us have to rest until next weekend.

But that’s a tune I’ve sung before. Almost a year ago exactly, after the early foreign release of Avengers: Age of Ultron I took a deep dive into why exactly it is that so many Hollywood movies come out overseas before debuting in the United States and Canada. You can read what I found in more detail here, but the short version is that in the age of social media early foreign releases help feed into the word-of-mouth back home. Plus, it is thought to combat piracy, and caters to the ever-increasingly important international market.

It didn’t used to be like this. Hollywood movies used to take months if not a full year to gradually reach the rest of the word. While that can still happen in isolated incidents and specific to countries with remarkably restrictive policies on importing movies (e.g., China, Japan) it’s simply not as common anymore. Instead, over the past month both The Huntsman: Winter’s War and Jungle Book tested the international box office waters first before hitting the United States, and with Civil War officially kicking off the summer movie season it’s going to keep happening.

Just so we can all be on the same page about this, I put together the following list breaking down which of summer 2016’s movies will be rolling out overseas first. The release dates are all from IMDB and are current as of this writing. I broke it down into two major categories: “At least 1 week earlier” and “Just a couple of days earlier.”

What did I discover? Beyond Civil War, the only films with significant early overseas roll outs are The Angry Birds Movie, X-Men: Apocalypse, Neighbors 2, Ice Age: Collision Course and Warcraft. Otherwise, there will just be a lot of movies opening overseas a couple of days earlier instead of a full week or more.

At Least 1 Week Earlier

Captain America: Civil War

Domestic Release Date: 5/6

Start of International Roll-Out: 4/27

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 54

The Angry Birds Movie

Domestic Release Date: 5/20

Start of International Roll-Out: 5/11

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 56

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising

Domestic Release Date: 5/20

Start of International Roll-Out: 5/4

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 27

X-Men: Apocalypse

Domestic Release Date: 5/27

Start of International Roll-Out: 5/18

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 53

Warcraft

Domestic Release Date: 6/10

Start of International Roll-Out: 5/25

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 36

The Secret Life of Pets

Domestic Release Date: 7/8

Start of International Roll-Out: 6/24

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 7

Ice Age: Collision Course

Domestic Release Date: 7/22

Start of International Roll-Out: 6/30

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 27

Star Trek Beyond

Domestic Release Date: 7/22

Start of International Roll-Out: 7/8

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: Bulgaria (7/8) + 28 others from 7/19-7/21

Florence Foster Jenkins

Domestic Release Date: 8/12

Start of International Roll-Out: 5/5

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 9

Sausage Party

Domestic Release Date: 8/12

Start of International Roll-Out: 6/10

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: Poland, Romania and Ukraine on 6/10 and then nothing until it hits 9 more countries on 8/11

Ben-Hur

Domestic Release Date: 8/19

Start of International Roll-Out: 8/10

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 6 the weekend before, 6 the day before

Just a Couple Days Earlier

The Nice Guys

Domestic Release Date: 5/20

Start of International Roll-Out: 5/18

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 5

Alice Through the Looking Glass

Domestic Release Date: 5/27

Start of International Roll-Out: 5/25

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 26

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

Domestic Release Date: 6/3

Start of International Roll-Out: 5/30

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 36

The Conjuring 2

Domestic Release Date: 6/10

Start of International Roll-Out: 6/8

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 18

Central Intelligence

Domestic Release Date: 6/17

Start of International Roll-Out: 6/15

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 6

Independence Day: Resurgence

Domestic Release Date: 6/24

Start of International Roll-Out: 6/22

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 21

The Purge: Election Year

Domestic Release Date: 7/1

Start of International Roll-Out: 6/29

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 8

Suicide Squad

Domestic Release Date: 8/5

Start of International Roll-Out: 8/3

# of Countries It’ll Play in Before U.S.: 25

These movies are coming out overseas a single day earlier:

• Money Monster
• Me Before You
• Now You See Me 2
• Finding Dory
• The BFG
• The Legend of Tarzan
• Ghostbusters
• Jason Bourne
• Pete’s Dragon
• Kubo and the Two Strings

And these movies will either come out in the U.S. first or have a simultaneous global release:

• Popstar: Never Stop Popping
• Free State of Jones
• Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
• The Infiltrator
• Lights Out
• Bad Moms
• The Founder
• Nine Lives
• The Space Between Us
• War Dogs
• Don’t Breathe
• Hands of Stone
• Mechanic: Resurrection