Apparently Fox has a lot of confidence in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. The studio heads believe in this movie so much that they have intentionally bumped up the release date to compete head-to-head with Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
This is a ballsy fucking move for the pun-based franchise. It’s already been accepted that Star Wars is going to be the biggest movie of the holiday – if not all time. Whether or not it ends up being good is irrelevant at this point. Star Wars will end up making enough money to humble Donald Trump.
So for Alvin and the Chipmunks to switch its release date from December 23 (which is a great release date for kid movies. Family-friendly fare makes bank when released around Christmas) and choose to take on the biggest movie of the year directly means that Fox thinks it has a real winner on its hands. It has to be the Citizen Kane of annoying CGI rodent films with eye-rollingly bad titles.
Just kidding! It’s Alvin and the Chipmunks. It will be unrepentant garbage. My guess is this is just Fox throwing a temper tantrum. Don’t forget, before Disney bought the franchise, Star Wars was a 20th Century Fox property. But Star Wars has moved on, and like a scorned lover, Fox is desperate to show the world it’s totally fine, that it never really needed Star Wars in the first place. Fox will bring its own film to the big dance on December 18th. That’ll show ’em. Unfortunately, Alvin and the Chipmunks was all that was available. But that’s fine! Fox will make it work. The studio will put on its happy face and show Star Wars how great things are without them.
This is a lie, of course, but no one else needs to know that. Fox will just grin and pretend chipmunk-based puns are always clever and hilarious, even though each forced joke kills all of humanity inside just a little bit more. Anything to make Star Wars think they’re happy.
December 18th won’t be awkward at all.