Whether it be movies, music, or video games, no industry is immune to bad timing. Many projects can be overshadowed by something far more popular releasing at the same time, or unfortunate enough to release in the wrong era. But for the most part they tend to find themselves held hostage by the whims on reality and human nature.

The entertainment industry has a history littered with so many bad release decisions that it begs the question: what is the most ill-timed release of all time?

Overshadowed

A classic example of a badly timed release is simply coming out at the same time as something else that’s WAY more popular. In order to avoid this, it’s no secret that in recent years many movie studios have avoided releasing anything alongside a Marvel movie. 

In 1989, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was released on the same day as Batman, which became the highest grossing film of the year. And although Honey, I Shrunk the Kids would go on to become a cult classic and spawn multiple sequels, in 1989 it was the best movie that no one was talking about.

In 1999, 10 Things I Hate About You and The Matrix were both released on Easter weekend, and I think we know who won that. Although, Heath Ledger would get his redemption in 2008 at the beginning of the superhero resurgence, when Mamma Mia! made the mistake in hindsight of releasing on the same day as The Dark Knight.

In the video game industry this is almost unavoidable. Mad Max has become famous as an underrated gem for several reasons, but the most notable factor is that it was released on the same day as Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Similarly, Vanquish came out on the same day as Fallout: New Vegas. And Enslaved: Odyssey to the West came out on the same day NBA 2K11 and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. These are just a few examples, but trust me, the list goes on.

Out of Time

Some bad release dates are the result a project being stuck in development hell and becoming the victim of an ever-changing world.

While The Death Cure was still a successful film, it was held back by the stigma set forth by similar films such as The Fifth Wave, The Darkest Minds, and the conclusion to Divergent. After being delayed for an entire year due to lead actor Dylan O’Brien being severely injured while filming an action scene, it was released at a time when the fad of adapting YA dystopian novels had run its course, and people were no longer interested.

In video games, after spending 15 years in development hell, Duke Nukem Forever released to scathing reviews for its extremely dated humor and gameplay. In 2019, after being delayed upwards of 4 times, Crackdown 3 was considered the pinnacle of mediocrity, and that it would’ve been a great game if it had come out 10 years earlier. Both games were mechanically sound, but by the time they came out, the world had moved on.

On the flip side, some projects are considered ahead of their time and don’t find success until years, or even decades later. Films like The Shawshank Redemption and It’s a Wonderful Life are examples of movies that bombed at the box office, and are now considered some of the greatest of all time.

But the biggest example of an entertainment product being too far ahead of its time is without a doubt the Sega Dreamcast. Released in 1998, it had online capability, motion controls, voice controls, a camera, a console dashboard, a Visual Memory Unit that allowed you to play specific games on-the-go, and the pièce de résistance… trigger buttons. Everything that’s considered standard now, the Dreamcast had over 20 years ago.

Making History

The most well known incidents of badly timed releases are ones that come out alongside historical events, most notably tragedies. This can not only be devastating for sales, but can also call into question ethical standards depending on if the release was before or after the real-life event.

By far, the most infamous example of an entertainment release alongside a historical event is Dream Theater’s Live Scenes from New York. Releasing on September 11, 2001 and featuring a burning New York City skyline within its cover art, the album was immediately recalled and re-released a short time later with a new cover. However there’s another album that was also scheduled for release in mid-September 2001 that featured an even more unsettling cover. The Coup’s Party Music left little to the imagination as it featured an explosion coming out of the World Trade Center. You can be forgiven for never hearing about this since the attacks happened before the album’s official release, and the studio had time to take action, delaying the release date and changing the cover.

MotorStorm: Apocalypse was scheduled for release on the PlatStation 3 in March of 2011, however on March 11th, Japan was hit with a 9.1 magnitude earthquake, the most powerful ever recorded in Japan. Given the similarities to the game, this became a worst-case scenario for Sony, and resulted in one of the most haphazard releases of the generation. In Australia, the game was released on schedule on March 17th, but Sony confirmed the company would halt any further shipments and pull all advertising campaigns. In the UK, the release was delayed to the end of the month, and again with pulled advertising. In the US, the release was pushed back to May. And in Japan, the game was cancelled outright. Sales took a massive hit and the financial struggle this caused would eventually lead to the closure of developer Evolution Studios.

(I know I’m bending the rules slightly with this next example, but I think it’s worth mentioning.)
Staying on the topic of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Disaster Report 4 Plus: Summer Memories, a video game about surviving an earthquake, was still in development at the time, and its cancellation was announced three days later. Weirdly though, pre-orders for the game actually increased following the disaster, and in 2014 it resumed production with a new publisher and has since been released.

In 2008, season 5 of the CBS drama NUMB3RS featured an episode titled Thirty-Six Hours about a train collision. Two weeks after filming the episode, the Chatsworth train accident occurred. Due to the similarities between the real-life wreck and the crash depicted in the episode, CBS delayed airing the episode. In order to fit the current story arc of the show, the episode had to be re-edited, and fearing that audiences would assume that the revised episode was written after the Chatsworth crash, the producers added a disclaimer at the beginning stating that the episode was filmed before the real-life events.

And the Winner is…

It’s in the category of historical events where we find what I believe to be the most horribly timed release in entertainment history, and it’s one that many people have probably never heard of.

The following video is a science fiction short film that was released on the YouTube channel Dust. Now I do want to say that the film itself is very well done and is a great piece of social commentary, and there’s no way the filmmakers could have predicted that the tragedy depicted in their film would come to life in such a similar fashion. But what I will fault them for is deciding to go through with the release, rather than delaying it in the wake of real world events. The film is titled Binge Watching, and was released on May 26, 2020, the day after George Floyd was killed.