Hollywood's release calendar is a quiet war, and the studios that pick their dates well win the box office — good for the big players, brutal for smaller films that guess wrong.

• Studios pick release dates by two rules: aim for holidays when people actually go out, and avoid opening against a bigger film.
• A movie expected to make $150 million can lose a third of that just by sitting next to a $500 million blockbuster.
• Rival studios learn each other's plans at industry conventions, where trailers and dates get shown off, then jockey for position.
• Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the Fourth of July are the exceptions — the money is too big for anyone to back down, so the heavyweights collide head-on.
• Disney long recruited from elite schools, and its most feared internal competitors came from sports and hard-nosed negotiating backgrounds, including the Herbalife CEO who later sat through the Ackman–Icahn short-selling fight.

Outlook: Expect the same date-shuffling around the coming holiday corridors, with the biggest titles once again going toe-to-toe rather than moving.