How to fix Disney’s box-office blues
With the House of Mouse at a crossroads after a disappointing summer movie season, we have some ideas about the way forward
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After a sluggish start, the 2023 summer movie season is about to close out with plenty of good news to report for Hollywood. Thanks to the Barbenheimer effect, audiences headed back to theaters in a major way, bringing in an estimated $3.7 billion in ticket sales so far. That’s already $4 million more than last summer’s cumulative total, and we’re still two weeks out from Labor Day. But there’s one big name missing from that conversation: Disney. With beloved IP like Star Wars and Marvel under its umbrella, not to mention two animated divisions that used to churn out guaranteed hits year after year, you’d think Disney would be sitting pretty among the winners this summer. But after lackluster results for The Little Mermaid, Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, Elemental, and The Haunted Mansion, all pricey productions, 2023 just hasn’t been Disney’s year.
What went wrong? And what can the studio do to get back on track? We have some ideas. We’ll leave the speculating about potential mergers, acquisitions and such to the business media. We’re experts in pop-culture here, after all, not finance. As such, our advice is more along the lines of the studio’s creative direction and how it can make the most of its iconic brands rather than what it can do to boost shareholder value. In an ideal world, those things would go hand in hand, but unfortunately that’s not always the case.
Go big or they’ll stay home
Walt Disney Animation Studios has long been seen as the jewel in the studio’s crown, but the last few years have been a story of diminishing returns. Raya And The Last Dragon, which was completed during the pandemic lockdown and released in March of 2021, opened with a paltry $8.5 million, and its final box-office total barely broke $130 million theatrically worldwide. It was followed by Encanto in 2022, a musical family adventure featuring songs from Lin-Mañuel Miranda that performed better than its predecessor, but with $256 million in sales it still fell well short of expectations. Sure, the pandemic was a big hurdle to overcome, but that doesn’t account for the dismal performance of Disney’s most recent animated release, Strange World, which earned just $70 million during its initial theatrical run last year.
And then there’s former hit factory Pixar, which has also seen its fortunes fall as of late. None of Pixar’s last five theatrical releases—Onward, Soul, Luca, Lightyear, and this summer’s Elemental—surpassed $500 million at the box office, a target most earlier Pixar films achieved with as much ease as Buzz Lightyear falling with style.
We’ve already covered what went wrong with Elemental, and what Disney could have learned from the recent Netflix released Nimona, which was resurrected by an independent studio after Disney shut down the Fox division Blue Sky Studios. In both cases, our advice boils down to making bolder creative choices, taking risks, and breaking away from the familiar formula. Find a way to make moviegoing special again, or people will just wait for a movie to come out on streaming in a few months. Fans turned out to see Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse in theaters this summer because of its innovative and artistic visuals, but also because their friends told them (correctly) they absolutely had to experience it on the big screen. When is the last time someone said that about a Disney or Pixar movie?
Overcome superhero overload
Speaking of Spider-Man, although superhero fatigue is real and fans are quickly tiring of multiverses (see: The Flash, or maybe in this case, don’t), those factors didn’t seem to have a negative effect on Across The Spider-Verse. It just goes to show that there’s a way to make superheroes interesting without relying on connections outside of the film. The big team-up trick Marvel Studios was able to pull off for a decade—first with The Avengers and finally in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame—is getting old, as is the talent. Maybe it’s time to scrap the universe altogether and start over from scratch.
When Disney acquired Fox it also got the rights to most popular Marvel Comics characters that had been off limits to the MCU. Yes, The X-Men and The Fantastic Four have been featured in multiple films before, but we’d love to see them get rebooted along the lines of Spider-Man, with the kind of energy and care that went into the first Iron-Man and Captain America films. They don’t even have to be part of the current MCU. In fact, it could be to their benefit if they weren’t.
Disney head honcho Bob Iger has already suggested that it’s time to slow the pace of Marvel films and shows, which is the right call. Take a breath, find the ideal filmmaker, and let them take their time with the material. This rush to put out so many films in such a short period of time is not only a hindrance to the creative process, it puts unnecessary strain on below-the-line talent, like VFX teams. The push for quick and cheap content was especially apparent this year, with the muddy mess of Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and the dull jumble of wasted potential of Secret Invasion on Disney+.
Disney’s one bright spot this summer, both creatively and financially, is Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3. It’s a decent template for how to approach Marvel content in the future. The film represents the singular vision of director James Gunn, who was allowed to complete his trilogy with minimal interference and without having to connect it to the greater MCU or whatever phase of it we’re in right now. The studio let Gunn be Gunn (before he was gone) and the film was all the better for it. The lesson here? Hire interesting filmmakers and let them realize their vision as they see fit. And don’t make the audience feel like they have to do homework before walking into the theater.
Stop trying to Force it
If these problems were limited to Marvel, that would be one thing, but the same issues keep coming up elsewhere. In the Star Wars galaxy, for instance, fans are experiencing a different kind of fatigue. With no new films in the immediate future (there are a few in the works, but they’re a long way off) the franchise lives mostly on Disney+ for the time being, and it hasn’t exactly been firing on all thrusters there. While The Mandalorian found popularity in its first two seasons, there was a noticeable drop in quality and viewers in season three. And although the creators of The Book Of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi set out to give the fans what they thought they wanted, both shows missed the mark badly.
What fans actually want is something that feels the same, but different. If that’s hard to quantify, just look at what Tony Gilroy did with Andor, possibly the best thing to happen to Star Wars since the film it’s spun off from, Rogue One. Unquestionably a win with fans, it gave us a more mature universe with room for complicated ideas (fighting creeping fascism will never go out of style, it seems). Andor didn’t rely on fan service or Jedi or legacy characters, just solid writing and sharp dialogue—“no way out” and “I’ve made my mind a sunless space” are now forever part of the quotable Star Wars canon—set against a lush and lived-in sci-fi backdrop. We wouldn’t expect future Star Wars series to copy this template exactly—that would be boring—but we love the idea of getting to explore new corners of the galaxy in ways we’ve never imagined.
Next up for Star Wars is the new live-action series Ahsoka, which just premiered on Disney+. We don’t yet know how it will be received, but it’s clearly aimed at a smaller audience of dedicated fans rather than a broader assortment of casual viewers. We’ll be following closely to see if that’s another key to success.
Start turning the ship
Disney still has a few films and series lined up to finish out 2023, but none of them feel like game changers that could turn around the company’s fortunes by year’s end. The only title scheduled under the Disney banner is Wish, an animated musical about a girl who makes a wish to save her kingdom. Despite a stellar voice cast, including Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine, nothing that we’ve seen so far seems to indicate a departure from the familiar Disney formula. The character designs have the same aesthetic as every Disney animated film since Tangled.
On the Marvel Studios side, we’ll finally be getting The Marvels, a team-up featuring Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris). It lands on November 10 after several schedule shuffles, not usually a good sign. There’s also the upcoming second season of Loki heading to Disney+, which could be interesting if it keeps up the momentum of its well-received first season, and Echo, based on a character seen for the first time in live action in the series Hawkeye. If you don’t remember anything that happened in Hawkeye, we wouldn’t blame you. Let’s just say the best part of it was what amounted to an extended cameo by Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova. After wasting our time with Secret Invasion Marvel is going to have to work extra hard to convince us that these new series will be worth it.
But Marvel has an even bigger problem on the horizon. After building the next major, multifilm arc around the villain Kang the Conqueror (effectively the franchise’s new Thanos), the studio is going to have to consider a recast, something executives don’t seem inclined to do. We strongly urge the studio to reconsider (LaKeith Stanfield is right there, and he’s already been in a Disney movie this year). A slower pace would give the studio more opportunity to thoroughly vet talent before tying them to the future of the franchise.
We understand that a company like Disney doesn’t exactly turn on a dime. It can take years for changes to become apparent (just look at how long the transition is taking at DC Studios). Even Walt Disney himself, famous dreamer that he was, couldn’t have envisioned the behemoth that his little animation studio would become. From films and TV shows to music, publishing, video games, theme parks, consumer products, cruise ships, and more, there isn’t any sector involved in the production and delivery of content that the multimedia conglomerate doesn’t have its four-fingered, white-gloved hand in somehow. Maybe it’s time to break things up, shift them around, and reconsider the current strategy. Because whatever Disney is doing now doesn’t seem to be working; the castle is starting to crumble under its own weight. There are ways to reinforce it, but not by simply doing more of the same.
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In 2019, Disney had seven billion dollar movies. If you’re looking for them to return to that, pack a lunch.Their present scuffles are partly due to a creative lull, partly due to an industry-changing pandemic and partly due to the fact that no studio is going to run that hot for a good while.
And most of the articles like this exist because writers assumed that was a new baseline so anything less is some kind of failure.
you don’t think the disney execs feel the same way?
Welcome to Wall Street. My employer reported earnings slightly above estimates on Thursday; the stock is now down about 9%.
Yeah, there’s no question Disney has had a rough year. Even without judging everything by the standards of their biggest movies/years, they have had few movies that did more than break even. BUT, it’s also a small sample size in an unprecedented time. I think some people are reading too much into it. I just hope Disney itself doesn’t overreact.
James Cameron is on the line for you, sir.
From the comic book side, I’d like to see more focus on individual creators realizing a distinct vision FIRST, with eyes toward inclusion in a larger universe second. Too much of the MCU stuff is basically 2.5 hours of splash page padding in service to cameos, post-credit scenes, and other shit that has little to do with what *should* be a character-centric story.The two most recent examples for me were Multiverse of Madness and Quantumania. Each flick was about 70/30 table setting/actual narrative. Fuck, M0M spent time to introduce a new character, and rendered her a walking plot device with only perfunctory characterization. It was the most box-checking shit I’ve seen yet in a Marvel flick, and done so cynically that you could’ve replaced “Xochitl Gomez, Latina daughter of two same-sex parents with superpowers” to “::insert name here::, Latina daughter of two same-sex parents with superpowers” and not missed a beat. As written, the character was a plot device in service to a Dr. Strange movie that wasn’t even *his* movie.And Quantumania? It took pretty much everything that made the Ant-Man flicks distinct, stripped it away, and replaced it with more green screen spectacle and world-ending stakes. They took a more heist-centric, buddy comedy with sci fi elements and turned it into another samey, neon-infused, “ZOMG THE STAKES ARE SO DIIIIIIIIIIIIIRE!” bit of sci fi opera bullshit.I get that the MCU is Feige’s baby, and he has a vision, and that the individual properties need to hew to that vision in some way. But when I’m going to see a movie, and pay nearly $20 for the privilege, I want the 2 – 2.5 hours to be well spent. So, like, make a movie that works *on its own*, and not one that’s laboring in service to a big crossover romp that hasn’t been written yet.TL;DR: Shang-Chi was fun. More of that sort of thing.
Something’s got to change. Every time I hear about Ironheart or Wonder Man or the Armor Wars movie, I think about the astronauts who were scheduled for Apollo 20.
Yeah, all these projects feel like they were greenlit in the “people will watch whatever the fuck we put on screen” era that gave rise to Eternals. The same with Echo, a show spun off from a series that was fine, about a character who did not stand out or show real promise. I think Daredevil: Born Again might be a better model for what Marvel should do going forward — a deep dive into a character fans actually care about, who has a long comic history to draw from, and played by an actor we already know fans like in the role.
There is something to be said about the comic book approach of diversifying your content. I think the bigger flaw is not making more of it standalone. There are a lot of people who only like Cosmic comic nonsense and only read about street level heroes when there’s a team up. Plenty of people love the horror stuff. Echo, Moon Knight, Werewolf by Night, The Eternals – they all have fanbases. But what they need to do is make them less interdependent and assess scope and budget to make them profitable.
I don’t disagree with that. But I think even though they “all have fanbases,” Marvel still needs to be more mindful of how large those fanbases are. I think Werewolf by Night smartly recognized that the market for the character was minimal. Doing a fun, short Halloween movie let people who’d never heard of the character get a little content, without having to really invest any time or money. I watched it, liked it, and thought, “Well, that was an OK way to spend a random weeknight evening.” When you’re talking about a movie on the big screen that costs hundreds of millions to make and market, you’re not counting on the handful of preexisting Eternals fans to make your money.
after the last 5 or so years i really, really have my doubts that feige ever had any kind of vision or brilliant skillset. you don’t even have to be that great a producer when disney is giving you an entirely blank cheque for almost 10 years.he was really lucky that he was able to retrofit and adapt some of the biggest, most important comic book stories of all time and re-sell them to a new audience…but after pulling most of the iconic and successful stories from the 50+ years of comic book storytelling i think it’s clear he’s hitting a wall because all he ever had to work with was…other peoples work.not denying he’s probably an extremely hard-working, passionate guy who knows his stuff…but i think we’ve all given him a lot of credit because he’s really the first and only person who’s ever had his job, so we’ve gone ‘well that’s a success so it MUST be because of feige’ and we’ve always been able to skirt any of the negatives onto other people (perlmutter, whoever directed the movie we don’t like, etc). i just think MAYBE it’s POSSIBLE we overrated him slightly over the last 15 years.
He oversaw a franchise that put out 23 movies over the course of 11 years. Every one of them was financially successful, and none of them were truly disliked by critics or audiences. They were all deemed at least “pretty good”, and most were deemed good-to-great. It all led up to 2018 and 2019 which had 4 movies (out of 6) go over $1 billion. The grand finale of that first huge arc was briefly the highest-grossing movie of all-time and made $100 million more in its opening weekend than the next highest one.Was it all Feige’s doing? Of course not. But he achieved something that hasn’t been achieved before and probably never will be again. It’s a massive and stunning accomplishment. Sure, there was some luck and some other people involved, but it’s entirely fair to give Feige most of the credit for running the whole thing.
Yeah, “Feige was never that good” is a ridiculous take. You can’t give the comics source all the credit without acknowledging the countless shite superhero movies from the same source (Daredevil, Elektra, Fantastic Four, Amazing Spiderman, Punisher, Ghost Rider, etc, etc)Personally I think Feige’s just overstretched. They went from a couple of movies a year to about 4 movies a year, plus 5 or 6 TV shows. It’s just too many projects to keep across. Plus his Star Wars project, whatever his plans are for the FF and X-Men and whatever corporate shit he’s dealing with behind the scenes.
not saying he was ‘never that good’, just that it’s possible he wasn’t some unique visionary with an overarching plan, he just happened to be good at a job that he was the first person to ever have, so he got lavished with praise and not as much criticism.
Not to jump on the “Feige is infallible” train, but it is possible that Disney’s mandates about what the MCU needs to do have changed in the past few years, and that while Feige is still “in charge,” he’s gotten marching orders he’d rather not have from Disney.That said, my uninformed opinion is that the expansion of the-number-of-hours-of-MCU-content-per-year (having exploded from ~7 to ~50) has stretched him super thin, and so whatever quality control he was exerting before can’t keep things in good order. Let’s be honest: As much fun as the MCU was in phases 1-3, it was still on average fairly standard/straightforward storytelling that survived on the merits of phenomenally good casting, and a handful of excellent creatives (e.g. James Gunn) being involved with various films that elevated them and raised the MCU’s batting average.
This is exactly my problem: every recent Marvel property I’ve watched is just advertising for other Marvel properties. Oh, who’s this guy? Well, you really ought to read Superior Ant-Man #6969-#6975, play the videogame in which said guy has a cameo, watch Loki, and have stuck around for the post-post-credits scene at the end of The Eternals, you fucking poseur. Also, Saving The World™ gets old every time. We know that since Marvel has every intention to keep pumping these out until the heat-death of the universe, so no one believes for a picosecond that the they’re really gonna fail saving the world.When the stakes are more personal, it’s more believable and engaging. It’s why I like the origin story movies first, because those tend to be more about the characters’ personal growth – after which Marvel inevitably raises the stakes in the stratosphere to a height where it’s impossible for anyone to fail.
Yep. It’s echoing the abysmal Marvel Comics era of massive crossovers every 6-12 months.
And I get that there are the sorts of FOMO-types who are hardwired to enjoy that shit – oh look! Here’s a massive, new system to learn! See what parts reference other parts! Compare this part to that part! Try to prognosticate what that bit of this part could mean for future parts! Write 10,000 word posts on the MCU subreddit about what the colour of Starlord’s underpants means for the (inevitable) sequel! How does it feel to know why that character has a turquoise coffee cup because you read that comic back in 1996 where he says he always liked the colour turquoise, and coffee, in that one panel on page 15? Awesome, right? Right!
There was a comments section a while back saying that Marvel movies are really the only movies worth seeing in cinemas, and everything else can go to streaming, and they might have a point, if today you actually paid your $19 and actually got a full movie, and not just fan service with a “TO BE CONTINUED….” sign hung on it. For the rest of us – it’s tiring. It’s a fucking homework assignment. I don’t think anyone really likes a Marvel film these days – “film”, singular – as in a standalone piece of cinema, that can be assessed purely in the bounds from the time the lights go down in the cinema to when the teenagers manning the joint start sweeping up the popcorn. Not even the Marvel fans. No, what they really like is the MCU – the whole, full-service, media concretion.
I don’t think anyone really likes a Marvel film these days – “film”, singular – as in a standalone piece of cinema, that can be assessed purely in the bounds from the time the lights go down in the cinema to when the teenagers manning the joint start sweeping up the popcorn. Not even the Marvel fans.I’m in that camp. The last Marvel flick I remember enjoying, start-to-finish, was Shang-Chi. It was a fun, well-shot, well-executed bit of superhero fare that made me care about a character I’d otherwise not have given two shits about.Still haven’t seen Love and Thunder, or GotG 3 (watching it this weekend). The urgency just isn’t there anymore, for me.
Yup: the origin stories a great, because they’re origin stories – they don’t require prior study and notes (they are the prior study.)It’s clear they’re on Phase III (nothing to do with the story in the movies, but rather the Marvel Market Strategy Phase III): keep stringing the rubes along so that they’ll sit through the shits believing that it’s required viewing for the next one, in the vain, vain hope that the next one’ll be good. I predict Phase IV of this strategy will be to dramatically kill of every single character in order to capture a new audience, which will fail because whatever generation comes after Z considers the MCU boomer movies, and then Phase V will be to bring back all the old characters they just killed off in order to desperately bring back the original fans because the number of new fans they got with Phase IV is miniscule.
‘Multiverse of Madness’ is a film that goes beyond being bad and actively makes me angry at everyone who made it.
Agreed. It’s a “Raimi” flick in that it feels like it was Sam Raimi in the chair, saying “Sure, fuck it, fine,” this time around.
I’ve got an idea that’s sure to make them the big bucks; a gritty reboot of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse complete with a slowed down sinister version of the Hot Dog song in all the trailers.
Focus on writing good stories instead of ticking boxes.
It’s as easy as make better shit.
That last bit is a cheap shot. Every single studio in Hollywood was falling all over themselves to get into the Jonathan Majors business.
Just because a bunch of people come out of the woodwork now and say, “Yeah, I knew that guy was trouble,” doesn’t mean they say it when asked before the guy is cast.
Fact is, the MCU went 15 years and dozens of relevant characters/actors and were remarkably good/lucky about not having assholes, especially once they got rid of Edward Norton.
Sure, Renner was a bit inappropriate at times and ScarJo is always good for a weird comment or too, but nothing criminal until Majors.
Crazy concept: 3 words,Make. Original. Content.
I actually think their streaming service is partly to blame. As a busy father, I have been fine just staying home and waiting for things to show up on + rather than finding time and a sitter to go out to a movie. And I’m all too happy to have the big budget short run series to entertain me rather than trying to go out to movies all the time. But I think other than a small subset of dedicated fans, they definitely missed the mark with the idea that the streaming service and big movies would feed off each other to grow both box office sales and subscribers to watching the continuous story unfold in both places.PS, Ashoka seems like a “meh” start so far. The weirdest thing about it is the two supporting roles so far don’t seem well-cast as the women playing the roles would have had to have been children during the original Rebels timeline based on their current late 20’s/early 30’s they are now.
Disney – “make better creative choices” is pretty weak/obvious advice. It’s like telling someone to only buy winning lottery tickets – no shit. If that was possible, I am sure they would love to do it.MCU – agreed that they should let directors just do their thing and then find a way to combine them later. Waititi’s take on Thor was (initially) good and different from Brannagh’s take, which was different from Favreau’s Iron Man and different from Captain America’s period piece. There has been a creeping sense of house style where everything is coming the same, as evidenced by Quantumania which is one of the most generic movies the MCU has ever put out (with an over-reliance on CGI to boot).Star Wars – Star Wars is always going to have your fans who want the same people fighting the same empire forever and ever and each movie is another version of the same story. Then there are other people who want something new. Instead of making things that half-ass appeal to both groups (and fail), make something for one or the other. I loved Mando S1, but S2 had way too many outside references (Rebels! Ahsoka! Boba Fett! Luke!) that it felt like requisite fan service. I am one of those who still hasn’t watched S3. A lot of Disney’s output reads to me as exploiting the IP by putting out sub-optimal content and hoping the name attached will bring in enough people to make it worth it. The DCEU is doing a bang-up job proving that doesn’t work, and stuff like Barbie/Oppenheimer/TMNT is showing that people will show up for well-made movies regardless of IP. Furthermore, there are so many entertainment options out there that a crap movie is going to have a hard time cutting it. Even good films are having a hard time doing pre-pandemic numbers. Times have changed.
Take chances on new content seems like a good risk for a risk adverse industry.
We’re experts in pop-culture hereLOL.
they’re gonna do what they always do – accidentally make something great that connects with people, and then spend the next half decade grinding it into the ground and forgetting why it was successful (because they never actually knew why), then we’ll have another article in 10 years about what happened to disney.
Maybe the problem is that a film that made over $250 million can be considered a flopMaybe it’s time to focus on good creative ideas and smart budgeting rather than blowing up everything in existence or stacking the cast with well known actors.
Soul and Luca were not really released in theaters, if at all. They went straight to Disney +
Onward was also only open for about a week because of lockdown.Soul, Luca and Turning Red all had very, very brief “FYC” releases.
Pixar seems like they are in a tough spot. For a few years it seemed like they were getting a lot of criticism for focusing on sequels, even though some of them were great like TS3 and Incredibles 2. Now they are mostly focusing on new stuff getting criticism for it not being as good as the previous stuff. Even though I thought Luca, Soul and especially Turning Red which wasn’t mentioned in the article were very good.
“some of them were great like… Incredibles 2″Toy Story should have been Pixar’s sole franchise. The Incredibles was obviously perfect for sequels but they blew it with a lazy rehash of the original. I loved Luca, and Elemental is quite a bit better than most are giving it credit for.
Not just lazy but way too late. The leads sounded like they aged the worst 20 years of their lives.
The narrative that Pixar is in free fall is inaccurate and AV Club has enjoyed pushing that story. Elemental outperformed Spiderverse internationally. It made $458 million before any streaming revenue or any merch. It’s the #3 kids movie of the year according to The Numbers. It is doing well on PVOD. Anyone trying to suggest Pixar has fallen because Onward, Luca, Soul and Turning Red didn’t make a billion dollars while ignoring that one of those movies came out the week before lockdown and the other three were barely released is at best misleading. Soul also won 2 Oscars.There’s this weird tendency in media criticism now to brush off the impact Covid had (and has) on the box office. The discussion of Encanto is similar here.
based on elemental’s long tail i sincerely think if they just did a ‘hey we’re giving proper theatrical releases to soul, luca and turning red. see them on the big screen’ they’d get an extra hundred million at least from each.
but also, i do wonder how much disney likes throwing 200+ million dollars at the wall with these kinds of returns. excusing the deep covid releases entirely, we’ve got a buzz lightyear movie that performed pretty poorly and a new ip that’s done better than ‘the good dinosaur’ but not as good as ‘brave’. and while i don’t think pixar will ever be in any real trouble, they do have a public perception to contend with that has devalued them in a lot of peoples eyes.that being said it’s not like the billions they’ve spent on MCUTV has generated anything for them except $10 a month they were getting anyway.
I think it really does depend on what the films do for other revenue streams. Anecdotally, my niece and SIL went as Raya and the Last Dragon characters together 2 years in a row for Halloween. The same niece has a ton of toys related to the movie. While I don’t think Raya is on a lot of adult minds, if it did manage to overperform in toys that can compensate for box office. I think the same holds true for Pixar properties. How many Elemental lunchboxes they sell surely matters to them too.In a perfect world, I’m sure they would like it to be both, but I think profitability can mean different things when you’re Disney. I’m also always interested to see what breaks out long-term and ends up being the future nostalgia fuel. Hocus Pocus was a bomb when it came out and now they’re selling special limited edition park merch for it. Nightmare Before Christmas is a similar vibe.
it’s also kind of ironic that because elemental was such a long-winded hit disney sees less of that revenue anyway.
Walt was a flawed man to say the least but up until the very end he was willing to sweat the smallest detail and bet the ranch on everything the studio produced. After he lost his religion regarding animation in the fifties and got sidetracked with TV and Disneyland he was still willing to risk bankruptcy on “Sleeping Beauty” and continually lost money on “The Mickey Mouse Club” along with his other television projects because he always put quality over profit every single time. Even after he died and the studio was essentially rudderless for the next two decades the people in charge continued to wrote some huge checks (and lost a ton of money) on a lot of risky projects that sadly were never as well conceived ad they were budgeted. Hell, up through “Fantasia 2000” they were still chasing crazy pipe dreams. It’s heartbreaking to see how low and soulless they’ve become and they deserve all the rotten luck they’ve had although it will still be a sad day if Apple buys them.
I’m sure this article was written a few weeks ago, but surprised to not see a mention about Elemental’s overall box office. You mention it not making over $500 million, but leave out the part where it made $458 million and performed better internationally than Across the Spiderverse and it’s being reported that it has turned a “modest profit” and it and Little Mermaid are performing really well on PVOD right now.I think Disney has a lot of work to do especially in Marvel and live action films. They need to really look at changing demographics of film goers. But every article that ignores the underperformance of the family box office all summer while pushing that Pixar is crashing is missing a big factor there. Yes, Across the Spiderverse made a lot of money. It also made that money primarily on adults, not on children.Also, pretending that the pandemic isn’t the primary reason that Raya and Encanto underperformed is disingenuous. The same for pointing out Onward didn’t make much money – Yeah, cos the world closed about a week after it came out. Same for Soul and Luca.
I’m sure this article was written a few weeks ago
Based on the downhill quality of this site, I think you’re being pretty generous.
“None of Pixar’s last five theatrical releases—Onward, Soul, Luca, Lightyear, and this summer’s Elemental—surpassed $500 million at the box office, a target most earlier Pixar films achieved with as much ease as Buzz Lightyear falling with style.”How about some context? Onward was released right before everything shut down for Covid. It only had about 1-2 weeks in theaters. Soul and Luca were only released in theaters in a minimal number of countries. They were released on Disney+ only in every country with access to that service. And Elemental is closing in on $500 million after a terrible start. It’s actually breaking even now. Only two of those movies got a fair run in theaters, and only one of those is a big flop.
i know it’s trendy to dump on disney right now but they’re not even in their worst flop era at the moment, lol. the 80s and the 00s were both waaay worse for them than the 2020s so far. all they need is one or two big hits and they’ll be “back,” cause that’s how it always works for them. (ex. little mermaid leading to the 90s renaissance, frozen doing the same in the 2010s, it’s all cyclical)
Andor is the lowest rated SW show on D+ by an order of magnitude. The critics liked it enough for them to greenlight the second season before they realized how bad the numbers were.
“We’re experts in pop-culture here, after all”.Aw. It’s sweet that you still think that.
…or they could stop pandering to the hyper-vocal, self-entitled, hate-filled, intolerant, woke mobs and get back to creating quality cinema. …but that’s not going to happen in this increasingly weak, cowardly society, now is it?