Before the era of streaming television, the dump months were two periods of the year when there have been lowered commercial and critical expectations for most new theatrical releases from American filmmakers and distributors. During these periods domestic audiences are smaller than the rest of the year, so no tentpole movies are released. January and February are usually most commonly described this way, with August and September sometimes included. Releases during those times primarily include films that would have been released at other times of year had they performed better at test screenings, films with less prominent stars, genre films (particularly horror), movies that cannot be easily marketed and films intended for a teenage audience, which has fewer entertainment options outside the home.
Several factors combine to create the dump months, most of them circumstances particular to the United States and Canada, the primary market for most major Hollywood releases. Both periods immediately follow the times of year in which the distributors concentrate films they expect to be the biggest critical or commercial successes, periods of increased spending on entertainment generally. While this often means that moviegoers have less disposable income afterward, economics alone does not explain the dump months. The weather and competition from other forms of mass entertainment and professional sports also play a part; the winter dump months are further affected by the Academy Awards eligibility rules.
The dump months evolved over the course of the 20th century. Although during the studio era most major releases followed annual patterns similar to today's, several classics like The Kid, Shadow of a Doubt and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre were released during January. Since the decline of the studios, however, memorable films from the dump months have become rare exceptions. Notable examples of these for films released in January and February include The Silence of the Lambs, a well-reviewed box office smash that went on to win the 1991 Academy Award for Best Picture, Get Out in 2017, and Black Panther, which became the number one movie of 2018 and a multiple Academy Award winner. In the late 1980s, Dirty Dancing and Fatal Attraction became hits following releases in August and September respectively.
Films released during the dump months have not always been consigned to cinematic oblivion. Some, like Tremors and Office Space, have become cult classics. Starting with Cloverfield, some 21st-century dump-months releases have managed to exceed $100 million on box office receipts. The similar success of low-budget horror films like The Devil Inside and Mama in the early 2010s has prompted studios to release films in that genre at times of the year other than Halloween and the dump months.
Etymology The term "dump months" comes from the belief that studios use the time periods in question as a "dumping ground" for movies they are contractually obligated to release but believe to have limited commercial prospects at best. "The big studios would never in a million years use this phrase", Dade Hayes, coauthor of Open Wide: How Hollywood Box Office Became A National Obsession, told Newsday in August 2017. "[B]ut they do view [these times of year] as a dumping ground."
Critics and journalists have no such reservations. "The first months of the year are known as the 'dump months' in Hollywood," wrote Vegas Seven critic Una LaMarche in early 2013, a period characterized by "movies that studios dislike, and want to release with little fanfare." Likewise, Paul Shirey at JoBlo.com dismisses September as "one of the most worthless months at the box office."
Jay Carr, a film critic for The Boston Globe, deployed the term in a 1989 article for his newspaper, one of the earliest uses of the term in print. "Everybody knows that January and February are post-Christmas dump months for the studios, when they open the movies that weren't strong enough for Christmas and aren't strong enough for Easter", Carr wrote. Use of the term became more common in the early 2010s.
Causes
While both dump-month periods immediately follow periods of greater movie attendance, when event movies expected to be critical or commercial successes are released, and periods of greater consumer spending generally there are also reasons specific to both periods that further dampen movie attendance to limit the expected box office returns to the extent that movies with strong potential will be scheduled for other times of year.
January–February
The main impediment to the release of highly anticipated or high-quality films in January and February is the calendar of the two major film awards, the Golden Globe Awards (January) and the Academy Awards, or "Oscars" (late February or early March), which overlap with those months. The winter weather also adds uncertainty to estimates of potential box office. Two holidays during the time provide some slight relief; however, they are offset by the distraction of Super Bowl weekend, which depresses spending on movies. The combined gross for all January releases 2002–2012 has averaged $387 million; for February it is $615 million. By comparison December, with its holiday releases, averages $1.2 billion.
Spending is low to begin with since many consumers are cutting back and repaying debts incurred during the preceding holiday season, as well as having less free time, Jeremy Kirk of Firstshowing.net, when asked to explain the dearth of good films in January, notes that moviegoers are returning to their work and school routines during the month. C. Robert Cargill of Ain't It Cool News adds that only those over 35, "who have savings accounts and weren't tapped out by Christmas," can afford to go to the movies regularly then. He attributes the early-year success of Taken and its sequels to that market, as well as that of many of Clint Eastwood's recent films, to that older market.
The website Box Office Mojo, which publishes reports on film grosses, divides the movie year into five seasons. It defines the winter season as lasting from the first day after New Year's week or weekend ends through the Thursday before the first Friday in March. The site's data go back to 1982, and in every year the winter season has had the lowest box office grosses. The weakest winter was 1983, when The Entity'''s $13 million take led the way to a total of $93.4 million in domestic grosses for all movies released during that season. On the other end, 2012 had the strongest winter, at $1.24 billion, topped by Safe House, which took in $124 million. Click on the season names to view data for each season going back to 1982.
Awards calendar
At the end of the year comes the holiday movie season, when the studios release both tentpole movies, such as the latest installments in popular franchises that are expected to be highly successful and "Oscar bait" movies that are seen as likely to earn critical praise and, more importantly, nominations for major awards such as the Golden Globes and Oscars, the industry's most prestigious. Those nominations are then used to promote the film. But while the former nominations are announced in December with the awards themselves given in early January, the Academy Award nominations are announced after the Golden Globes, and the actual awards are not given until late February leaving most of the first two months of the year as Oscar season: a period during which any Golden Globes received as well as Oscar nominations can be used to promote the film to audiences, while studios lobby Academy members to vote for their nominees.
To be eligible for award consideration, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences requires that a film be shown in a theater in Los Angeles County, California, for at least seven consecutive days during which it is advertised in print media.; Studios hoping to position a film for some nominations usually satisfy that minimum requirement, then ease them into wide release from then until the nominations or the awards ceremony. The flexibility this marketing strategy requires means that screens be available, and studios limit their releases of new films during this time to that end. As critic Ty Burr explained in a 2013 New York Times Magazine article on the mediocrity of new releases in the first month of the year: "[T]he studios ... know our attention is elsewhere."
New films shown publicly anywhere for the first time after January 1 themselves are ineligible for Oscars until the following year, by which time they will likely have been forgotten by critics, audiences and voters. The Silence of the Lambs, winner of the 1991 Academy Award for Best Picture, is a rare exception, as the only film in the post-studio era released in the first two months of its year to go on to win that Oscar. Burr calls it "the grand exception to the January Movies Will Never Amount to Anything rule," and finds that only one other classic of the late 20th century, Dr. Strangelove, was a January release. Modern examples of early releases that received Best Picture nominations includes Get Out (2017), Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), and Sinners (2025). In all of the listed examples, the films exceeded box office expectations thanks to positive word of mouth, enabling them to sustain momentum into awards season.
Theaters will also still be running any holiday-season hits even if they had not been nominated for awards, further reducing the screens available for new movies. Ray Subers, an editor at Box Office Mojo, says there are two types of January moviegoer that keep December releases on screens throughout the months. "Discerning adult audiences", he told The Atlantic in 2012, spend the month congregating to those films on critics' lists for the best of the year they have not yet gotten to see, while "the general moviegoers are seeing the event films of December."
Winter weather
During January and February, winter storms become more likely in the Northern Hemisphere than they are in December. While they do not affect the entire U.S., the Northeast and Midwest are particularly prone to them, along with most neighboring areas of Canada. This includes many major metropolitan areas, and movie markets, in both countries.
When winter storms hit, bringing with them combinations of precipitation that making driving difficult and sometimes dangerous, moviegoers often prefer to stay home. Non-essential travel is officially discouraged, and in severe enough weather all non-emergency driving can be banned in some areas until the situation improves. In anticipation of the February 2013 nor'easter, which struck on the month's first weekend, three large chains closed down many of their theaters in the Northeast. Industry analysts feared that the storm could seriously impact the box office prospects of two films opening that weekend, Identity Thief and Side Effects, both of which were seen as having potential to do better than most winter movies. While it afterwards appeared that the two films were not seriously affected, and did better than expected, with Identity Thief even winning the weekend, despite generally poor reviews and word of mouth, with $36 million in receipts, overall box office was down 45 percent from the same weekend the previous year. Side Effects finished a distant third with a quarter of Identity Thiefs take. The clearest sign of the storm's effect, according to Box Office Mojo, was the 35 percent drop in earnings for Silver Linings Playbook, then in wide release after several Oscar nominations.
Holiday weekends and Super Bowl