Marvel owes its early summer dominance to Brendan Fraser and an unexpected production delay.

Much like how Halloween “belonged” to the release of a new Saw movie, the first weekend of May has become the home of new Marvel Comics movies. While there have been occasional attempts from other studios to wiggle in on this territory (such as when Warner Bros. briefly set Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice for an early May 2016 slot), film adaptations of Marvel Comics properties have held an iron grip over this release frame for nearly two decades.

Even with the COVID-19 pandemic preventing a new Marvel movie from debuting in 2020 and 2021, it’s still hard to imagine the first weekend of May not delivering a new Marvel title. This is especially true since the arrival of a new Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy movie in early May has come to not only signal the expansion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe but also usher in the start of the summer blockbuster season. While these accomplishments have ensured that early May has become synonymous with superhero movies, it wasn’t all that long ago that it was rare to see any big films open on the first weekend of May.