Disney (and others) at the Box Office - Current State of Affairs

[Disney Irish]

You can do that too and see the growth in international too. You can use the most recent example as just one. Every Final Destination film has grown in international box office, particularly the last two show this with a larger increase.

It depends on if you do it based on inflation adjusted numbers or not. Because if you do, 4 actually has done the best internationally, and I don't think 7 will catch it -

 

[celluloid]

Yeah, inflation will cause everything to vary. Global is more unstable than US.

Withthout getting into the weeds again: Trend is the trend and horror has been a Blockbuster before and could again, not likely of course this year, which not what the point was on. Currently, outside of family films it is the best chaser a studio has and what has gotten people in.

 

[DKampy]

So then is it possible this expectation that you have for a movie hitting $400M domestic just a bit unrealistic? I ask this seriously because I've certainly never heard anybody in the industry use that mark as an expectation, WW numbers yes, but never domestic alone.

Yeah … I don’t get the domestic only expectations… when a film has completely finished its run…. Most usually talk about worldwide totals in gauging whether a film was successful or not

 

[celluloid]

Yeah … I don’t get the domestic only expectations… when a film has completely finished its run…. Most usually talk about worldwide totals in gauging whether a film was successful or not

In that case, it is not neglect but instead, it is rather dire for Superhero films as Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts can't even get to 500 million worldwidewhere we will have multiple family films going towards a billion worldwide and Horror consitently getting over 300 million worldwide.

 

[LittleBuford]

The official trailer is here!



I am so excited!

 

[TP2000]

I think there’s a blowback when we say the word “legs”. Like some prognostication that every movie is going to pull an Elemental or Mufasa and rescue itself from the brink.

I only learned about that phrase from The Numbers site, and I use its definition and daily updated chart that tracks such things.

Like Lilo & Stitch, which for the purposes of this conversation conveniently has entirely average legs. Not weak, at or beneath the shaded area, nor strong like some movies do going way above the shaded area in Weeks 2 through 8, etc.

Of course, now that I've posted that and the explanation they use for it on The Numbers website, I'm sure someone will be along shortly to claim that data is cherry-picked or misrepresented, or fake. Or whatever the new outrage is over Lilo & Stitch performing average at the box office thus far.

Lilo & Stitch (2025) - Box Office and Financial Information

Financial analysis of Lilo & Stitch (2025) including production budget, domestic and international box office gross, DVD and Blu-ray sales reports.

thenumbers.com

 

[TP2000]

Though I don't doubt you have family and cultural reasons for using it, the English "oof" is a cognate of the Swedish "uff" rather than a derivative of it (it exists in many Germanic languages). It is attested as far back as the eighteenth century.

Oxford English Dictionary

The OED is the definitive record of the English language, featuring 600,000 words, 3 million quotations, and over 1,000 years of English.

www.oed.com

Definition of OOF

—used to express discomfort, surprise, or dismay… See the full definition

www.merriam-webster.com

Fascinating! Who knew?!? And my Aunt Ingrid would have loved to have sat next to you at a dinner party!

 

[TP2000]

There’s also no tool that really captures international due to the staggered release nature. See my sneak edit on Japan above. I won’t commit to 110M…

Underestimate Japanese love of Stitch and Hawaii to your peril.

I agree on the Japan thing. It's really a wild card. The Japanese ladies love that kind of stuff over there!

The only pause I have is when I remember how the Stitch show in Tokyo's Tomorrowland is always a walk-on with a half empty theater.

 

[TP2000]

I don’t have terribly high expectations for Elio, unfortunately. But I think F4 could do reasonably well. There seems to be expectancy there, Thunderbolts on the other hand had very little and at least turned out to be good.

I've been getting constant commercials for it on YouTube the past few days. Last night I stopped and watched the entire 60 second commercial and thought.... "Uh, that looks kind of dumb." It's definitely a movie where the ladies in HR weighed in on the storyboarding process, which never ends well for anyone.

My pop-culture radar is not impressed, and I don't have high hopes for it based off of what I've seen so far.

 

[BrianLo]

I agree on the Japan thing. It's really a wild card. The Japanese ladies love that kind of stuff over there!

The only pause I have is when I remember how the Stitch show in Tokyo's Tomorrowland is always a walk-on with a half empty theater.

I think that represents the quality of the attraction more than the fondness for the IP.

 

[Agent H]

The official trailer is here!



I am so excited!

As someone who has never seen the musical and is still working on the book the music in this one sounds better than the music in the last one. And that’s saying something.

 

[Agent H]

I've been getting constant commercials for it on YouTube the past few days. Last night I stopped and watched the entire 60 second commercial and thought.... "Uh, that looks kind of dumb." It's definitely a movie where the ladies in HR weighed in on the storyboarding process, which never ends well for anyone.

My pop-culture radar is not impressed, and I don't have high hopes for it based off of what I've seen so far.

Which movie are you talking about?

 

[LittleBuford]

As someone who has never seen the musical and is still working on the book the music in this one sounds better than the music in the last one. And that’s saying something.

I think the consensus is that the first half of the stage show is musically stronger, so it'll be interesting to see how the film ends up being received. I agree it looks promising!

 

[Agent H]

I think that represents the quality of the attraction more than the fondness for the IP.

I actually think it looks cute but yeah there’s only so popular a turtle talk style show can be.

 

[Disney Irish]

I only learned about that phrase from The Numbers site, and I use its definition and daily updated chart that tracks such things.

Like Lilo & Stitch, which for the purposes of this conversation conveniently has entirely average legs. Not weak, at or beneath the shaded area, nor strong like some movies do going way above the shaded area in Weeks 2 through 8, etc.

View attachment 862358
View attachment 862359

Of course, now that I've posted that and the explanation they use for it on The Numbers website, I'm sure someone will be along shortly to claim that data is cherry-picked or misrepresented, or fake. Or whatever the new outrage is over Lilo & Stitch performing average at the box office thus far.

Lilo & Stitch (2025) - Box Office and Financial Information

Financial analysis of Lilo & Stitch (2025) including production budget, domestic and international box office gross, DVD and Blu-ray sales reports.

thenumbers.com

A couple things that I think you miss in this explanation when reading it -

1. Its domestic only, its doesn't account for international.
2. Its based on an average of the last 5 years only. And if you remember what's happened the last 5, the whole box office has been turned on its head.

So when talking about "legs" a lot of the old rule book that people tended to use got thrown out and reset. So the averages have been out of whack because there were wide swings over the last 5 years because its a small sample size.

And here is why just using that chart doesn't work in a lot of cases in this post-pandemic world. I think we can all agree that Minecraft has been a monster of a movie this year, coming just shy of $1B it had pretty good "legs" both domestically and internationally with a fairly normal 45/55 domestic/international total split.

Well here is its chart according to Numbers -

Look at it, its "legs" according to Numbers are at the bottom of that shaded area meaning according to the site it had poor "legs" domestically during its run. But that doesn't match up with its actual domestic number of $423M domestically, which showed it actually had good legs. So it doesn't add up.

Now look at it compared to Stitch -

They look like they are tracking almost lock step with each other based on just the chart.

But.... If you drill closer and look at the daily numbers.....

Stitch has actually been tracking higher almost daily since almost the beginning, and now is $1.4M ahead of where Minecraft was at that same point. Meaning that if it continues with its "legs" it'll continue to do better than Minecraft and should bring in more domestically, ie it has good "legs".

And again none of this means anything for international as that isn't captured in that chart. And that calc you do where you take the final domestic/international of one movie already out of theaters and compare it to a movie still in theaters doesn't work as has been explained previously as well.

 

[Tony the Tigger]

As someone who has never seen the musical and is still working on the book the music in this one sounds better than the music in the last one. And that’s saying something.

That is the worst book I have ever forced myself to finish reading. The minds that translated it to the stage and the screen were brilliant to omit the screwy parts.

 

[TP2000]

Which movie are you talking about?

So sorry for the confusion. The movie that BrianLo was talking about in the quote I used there; Elio.

Are you getting a lot of YouTube commercials for it? I am. I think it looks kind of dumb. At least so far.

It's reminding me of Strange World, and not in a good way.

 

[TP2000]

A couple things that I think you miss in this explanation when reading it -

1. Its domestic only, its doesn't account for international.
2. Its based on an average of the last 5 years only. And if you remember what's happened the last 5, the whole box office has been turned on its head.

So when talking about "legs" a lot of the old rule book that people tended to use got thrown out and reset. So the averages have been out of whack because there were wide swings over the last 5 years because its a small sample size.

And here is why just using that chart doesn't work in a lot of cases in this post-pandemic world. I think we can all agree that Minecraft has been a monster of a movie this year, coming just shy of $1B it had pretty good "legs" both domestically and internationally with a fairly normal 45/55 domestic/international total split.

Well here is its chart according to Numbers -

View attachment 862371

Look at it, its "legs" according to Numbers are at the bottom of that shaded area meaning according to the site it had poor "legs" domestically during its run. But that doesn't match up with its actual domestic number of $423M domestically, which showed it actually had good legs. So it doesn't add up.

Now look at it compared to Stitch -

View attachment 862373

They look like they are tracking almost lock step with each other based on just the chart.

But.... If you drill closer and look at the daily numbers.....

View attachment 862374

Stitch has actually been tracking higher almost daily since almost the beginning, and now is $1.4M ahead of where Minecraft was at that same point. Meaning that if it continues with its "legs" it'll continue to do better than Minecraft and should bring in more domestically, ie it has good "legs".

And again none of this means anything for international as that isn't captured in that chart. And that calc you do where you take the final domestic/international of one movie already out of theaters and compare it to a movie still in theaters doesn't work as has been explained previously as well.

So, we're thinking $950 Million globally for Lilo & Stitch?

 

[Disney Irish]

So, we're thinking $950 Million globally for Lilo & Stitch?

I don't know the final numbers, or even have an accurate prediction I can make.

But... If we're basing it on JUST the domestic chart from Numbers it looks to be higher than that. It really all depends on international, because if it really tracks like Minecraft (which I believe its actually doing better both domestically and internationally) that means it'll bring in more than $100M more than domestic for international, leading to still a potential over $1B final number.

So just a guess, a similar total to Moana 2 is still in the cards.

 

[coffeefan]