We study how production and promotion budgets can play a strategic role for movie studios to secure the most profitable release dates by scaring off the competition. In a game-theoretic setting, where two studios choose their budget before simultaneously setting the release date of their movie, we prove that two equilibrium configurations are possible: either releases are simultaneous (at the demand peak) or they are staggered (one studio delays the release of its movie so as to avoid any overlap with the other movie). Interestingly, in the latter equilibrium, the first-mover secures its position by investing more in production and promotion than the second-mover. We test the predictions of our theoretical model on a dataset that comprises more than 1500 American movies released in ten countries from January 1, 2001 to December 31, 2013. Our empirical analysis largely confirms that higher budgets allow studios to move release dates closer to the demand peaks.