It used to be that summer blockbusters were released in the summer. For the past decade they have been released earlier and earlier each year. Now, the first week of May is officially the beginning of summer movie blockbuster season.
In the past, potential Oscar contenders received their releases beginning the week of Thanskgiving. This year, the Oscar campaign season starts in early October, with the Tom Hanks film Captain Phillips, a true story about the Captain of a ship that was taken over by nasty Somali pirates.
Captain Phillips stars two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks in the true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years. The film is directed by Oscar® nominee Paul Greengrass, from a screenplay by Billy Ray and based upon the book, A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea, by Richard Phillips with Stephan Talty.
The movie Captain Phillips is directed by Paul Greengrass of The Bourne Identity fame, and who was nominated for the Best Director Oscar for United 93.
Captain Phillips is the first of two movies released in 2013 that two-time Best Actor Tom Hanks has a shot at winning a third Oscar for. The other is