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

[Miss Rori]

Generally, August is when studios release either stuff they need to get off the table but are too expensive to just dump in January/February or September, or titles that they're not absolutely sure will be blockbusters but are good enough to become word-of-mouth hits. (The Sixth Sense was an August release, ditto the first Guardians of the Galaxy.) Disney might have had something in releasing Elio in early August, when all the other kid-friendly blockbusters are worn out, if not for having already staked out Freakier Friday for the "word-of-mouth" slot.

As for Elio's massive retool ostensibly being in the name of high quality, that didn't help either Captain America - Brave New World or the Snow White remake's prospects, or Wish before that. If anything these days massive retools on Disney projects tend to be throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater.

The real red flag regarding Elio is that Disney still hasn't lifted the professional review embargo as of Monday night, and I can't remember the last time they waited this long to do that for a Pixar movie. If this movie was going to get glowing reviews, they would have capitalized on them by now. (I suspect they're still smarting over lifting the review embargo for Wish the Friday before it opened.)

 

[DKampy]

Very unrelated, but I am hopeful people will eventually realize what a talent Rachel Zegler is.

She is getting stunning reviews already for Evita in London.

Zegler is a phenomenal talent…. She always gets great reviews…even when they find flaws with a work she is in… Rachel is never the issue… but a highlight…. I am sure she will have a long career if she wants it…. The Rachel Zegler’s career is over narrative is greatly exaggerated and mostly just online discourse

 

[TalkingHead]

I can’t believe they moved Elio’s release so many times only to decide a crowded June was the right time. Not exactly setting it up for box office success.

 

[DKampy]

The real red flag regarding Elio is that Disney still hasn't lifted the professional review embargo as of Monday night, and I can't remember the last time they waited this long to do that for a Pixar movie. If this movie was going to get glowing reviews, they would have capitalized on them by now. (I suspect they're still smarting over lifting the review embargo for Wish the Friday before it opened.)

that no longer seems to be the case anymore unless the film premiered at a festival or starts out limited before wide…. These days most films may have an early social embargo lifted…. But the full reviews are not allowed till Wednesday…. How to Train Your Dragon reviews waited till then…. None of the other films released this Friday has reviews yet including 28 years later…. To bring it back to Disney both L&S and Thunderbolts reviews waited till the Wednesday before release

 

[Ghost93]

that no longer seems to be the case anymore unless the film premiered at a festival or starts out limited before wide…. These days most films may have an early social embargo lifted…. But the full reviews are not allowed till Wednesday…. How to Train Your Dragon reviews waited till then…. None of the other films released this Friday has reviews yet including 28 years later…. To bring it back to Disney both L&S and Thunderbolts reviews waited till the Wednesday before release

And social media embargoes can't be trusted since they often consist of influencers or critics who want to keep their access. Social media reactions almost always lean positive.

 

[DKampy]

And social media embargoes can't be trusted since they often consist of influencers or critics who want to keep their access. Social media reactions almost always lean positive.

I don’t know how true this is…. But I heard a rumor that Lionsgate specifically told critics could only leave positive comments after Ballerina’s social media embargo lifted

 

[Disney Irish]

I don’t know how true this is…. But I heard a rumor that Lionsgate specifically told critics could only leave positive comments after Ballerina’s social media embargo lifted

It happened -

Lionsgate’s Staggered ‘Ballerina’ Embargo For “Enthusiastic” & “Critical Sentiment” Irks Reviewers

Lionsgate's Staggered 'Ballerina' Embargoes For "Enthusiastic" & "Critical Sentiment" Irks Reviewers

deadline.com

 

[TP2000]

Very unrelated, but I am hopeful people will eventually realize what a talent Rachel Zegler is.

She is getting stunning reviews already for Evita in London.

As part of her debut on the London stage, has she gone on TikTok to bad mouth the Argentine government yet?

That could help.

 

[TP2000]

Target Run!

I had to make a Target Run unexpectedly this evening, and I decided to make a night of it with dinner at Blaze Pizza and dessert at Crumbl before I went on Target, like the Monday night hellion that I am. And after a successful romp through the cleaning aisle and 5 minutes of smelling candles for no good reason I found...

Elio practically non-existent in the Toy Department.

The Boys aisles had absolutely no Elio anything. The How To Train Your Dragon section was obliterated, with hardily anything left. The endcaps in the Boys aisles featured Jurassic Park and Superman. Not a single toy for Elio was spotted in the Boys aisles or the Unisex games/Lego aisles. Anything pink and/or Barbie reigned supreme in the Girls aisles, as she should.

So I gave up, thinking "Seriously Emeryville, what did you spend all that money on???"

Yet as I was walking to the Pet aisle to buy a box of Milkbones to keep all the neighbor's dogs on my good side, I spotted him! There was an Elio presence in Target! In the children's section of the Book department, nestled beside a stack of Rachel Zegler's Snow White books slapped with 20% Off! stickers and just above a stack of books teaching little girls how to be more like Taylor Swift if they want to be happy, sat two (2!) copies of an Elio book for children just learning to read. Elio exists within the vaunted Target/Disney Merchandising Universe!

So what did I learn on Monday night? Crumbl's peanut butter cup skillet cookie this week is darn good, and Elio doesn't look like it's going anywhere at the box office anytime soon. So a hit and a miss tonight.

 

[Tony the Tigger]

Very unrelated, but I am hopeful people will eventually realize what a talent Rachel Zegler is.

She is getting stunning reviews already for Evita in London.

I think given enough separation from Snow she'll be recognized even by those that hated on her.

I just rewatched Snow White yesterday on D+ with my husband, who hadn’t seen it yet.

When it was over, I asked him, “Man on the street, what did you think?”

He said, “I liked it. I don’t know what the hoopla was all about.” I proceeded to list the reasons for the hoopla, and he reacted by making faces at all of them.

Now, let me tell you, we make fun of movies. We MST3000 movies as we watch. I did make a crack here and there.

But I did not intend to watch the whole thing. I intended to get him started, and have him watch while I ran a few quick errands, then come back and finish with him.

Instead, I watched the whole thing. The beginning is very touching. The story is compelling, the ending - perhaps a bit rushed - was good, and also touching.

With the noise behind me, I wasn’t watching for who is acting well, or hyper analyzing the cgi. I was just watching a movie - a good movie, which is #1 on Disney+ and I can’t believe a kid wouldn’t enjoy it, or would care about skin color, etc.

Gal is still a little wooden, the Dwarfs are still a little off, Rachel still sings beautifully, and the story is still a modernized upgrade. I could do with a bigger battle scene at the end, but it’s a fairy tale, not an action flick or Harry Potter.

This movie will fare better than its box office.

 

[Disney Irish]

I just rewatched Snow White yesterday on D+ with my husband, who hadn’t seen it yet.

When it was over, I asked him, “Man on the street, what did you think?”

He said, “I liked it. I don’t know what the hoopla was all about.” I proceeded to list the reasons for the hoopla, and he reacted by making faces at all of them.

Now, let me tell you, we make fun of movies. We MST3000 movies as we watch. I did make a crack here and there.

But I did not intend to watch the whole thing. I intended to get him started, and have him watch while I ran a few quick errands, then come back and finish with him.

Instead, I watched the whole thing. The beginning is very touching. The story is compelling, the ending - perhaps a bit rushed - was good, and also touching.

With the noise behind me, I wasn’t watching for who is acting well, or hyper analyzing the cgi. I was just watching a movie - a good movie, which is #1 on Disney+ and I can’t believe a kid wouldn’t enjoy it, or would care about skin color, etc.

Gal is still a little wooden, the Dwarfs are still a little off, Rachel still sings beautifully, and the story is still a modernized upgrade. I could do with a bigger battle scene at the end, but it’s a fairy tale, not an action flick or Harry Potter.

This movie will fare better than its box office.

And I'm sure the response will vary depending on who you ask, but overall I think it'll end up going down as a flawed but acceptable popcorn flick. And I've always said had it been made by any other studio it would have done so much better at the box office and there would have been zero drama surrounding it.

 

[Tony the Tigger]

flawed but acceptable popcorn flick.

As 80% of the movies I choose to see tend to be. (Most Marvel included.)

10% are drivel I regret watching, or even highly acclaimed but I didn’t like them. (A Clockwork Orange, Forrest Gump.)

10% are actually memorable or impressive or rewatchable. (Those 3 things don’t necessarily go hand in hand.) Star Wars, Jaws, Harry Potter, Poltergeist, most Gene Kelly or Judy Garland stuff.

A handful hit me on a deep level and stay with me. What Dreams May Come, A Perfect World, This Boy’s Life.

 

[LSLS]

I just rewatched Snow White yesterday on D+ with my husband, who hadn’t seen it yet.

When it was over, I asked him, “Man on the street, what did you think?”

He said, “I liked it. I don’t know what the hoopla was all about.” I proceeded to list the reasons for the hoopla, and he reacted by making faces at all of them.

Now, let me tell you, we make fun of movies. We MST3000 movies as we watch. I did make a crack here and there.

But I did not intend to watch the whole thing. I intended to get him started, and have him watch while I ran a few quick errands, then come back and finish with him.

Instead, I watched the whole thing. The beginning is very touching. The story is compelling, the ending - perhaps a bit rushed - was good, and also touching.

With the noise behind me, I wasn’t watching for who is acting well, or hyper analyzing the cgi. I was just watching a movie - a good movie, which is #1 on Disney+ and I can’t believe a kid wouldn’t enjoy it, or would care about skin color, etc.

Gal is still a little wooden, the Dwarfs are still a little off, Rachel still sings beautifully, and the story is still a modernized upgrade. I could do with a bigger battle scene at the end, but it’s a fairy tale, not an action flick or Harry Potter.

This movie will fare better than its box office.

It'll be interesting to see how it ends up remembered. I'll say that I mentioned putting it on to my 12 year old and she gave me an absolutely disgusted look cause she thought it looked terrible (and she used to love Snow White). NOW, one thing I learned in that interaction is she is fed up with the remakes in general (I learned she was angry with the Stitch remake which I was honestly shocked by. They went without me cause I hate remakes, but that was the most excited I've seen her for a movie in a long time), so that could be a part of it on our end not with many others, but It will be interesting to see if people do end up seeing it and saying "Eh, it's not that bad" or if people just won't watch it no matter what.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Target Run!

I had to make a Target Run unexpectedly this evening, and I decided to make a night of it with dinner at Blaze Pizza and dessert at Crumbl before I went on Target, like the Monday night hellion that I am. And after a successful romp through the cleaning aisle and 5 minutes of smelling candles for no good reason I found...

Elio practically non-existent in the Toy Department.

The Boys aisles had absolutely no Elio anything. The How To Train Your Dragon section was obliterated, with hardily anything left. The endcaps in the Boys aisles featured Jurassic Park and Superman. Not a single toy for Elio was spotted in the Boys aisles or the Unisex games/Lego aisles. Anything pink and/or Barbie reigned supreme in the Girls aisles, as she should.

View attachment 865198

So I gave up, thinking "Seriously Emeryville, what did you spend all that money on???"

Yet as I was walking to the Pet aisle to buy a box of Milkbones to keep all the neighbor's dogs on my good side, I spotted him! There was an Elio presence in Target! In the children's section of the Book department, nestled beside a stack of Rachel Zegler's Snow White books slapped with 20% Off! stickers and just above a stack of books teaching little girls how to be more like Taylor Swift if they want to be happy, sat two (2!) copies of an Elio book for children just learning to read. Elio exists within the vaunted Target/Disney Merchandising Universe!

View attachment 865199

So what did I learn on Monday night? Crumbl's peanut butter cup skillet cookie this week is darn good, and Elio doesn't look like it's going anywhere at the box office anytime soon. So a hit and a miss tonight.

Shouldn't you be withholding judgement until you see how many boys with an eye patch show up at your door on Halloween?

 

[Miss Rori]

ShopDisney.com only has one plastic figure playset and three T-shirts on offer for Elio. Either Disney Corporate knew they had a stinker that wasn't worth merchandising with this movie, or they are still smarting over the disastrous performance of the Lightyear and Wish merchandise. What a shame.

 

[Ghost93]

And I'm sure the response will vary depending on who you ask, but overall I think it'll end up going down as a flawed but acceptable popcorn flick. And I've always said had it been made by any other studio it would have done so much better at the box office and there would have been zero drama surrounding it.

Snow White 2025 isn't a great movie, but it's hardly the abomination people make it out to be. I think it got dragged into various culture/policial wars from 2023-2025 and was plagued by controversies with the cast that made it a punching bag for so many. In think 10-15 years from now, when there is a lot more distance behind us on Trump and the Israel/Palestine conflict, people going into the movie will struggle to see what all the fuss was about.

That's assuming anyone is watching the movie 10-15 years from now. I think it will most likely be forgotten among the general public in a couple of years.

 

[Disney Irish]

Snow White 2025 isn't a great movie, but it's hardly the abomination people make it out to be. I think it got dragged into various culture/policial wars from 2023-2025 and was plagued by controversies with the cast that made it a punching bag for so many. In think 10-15 years from now, when there is a lot more distance behind us on Trump and the Israel/Palestine conflict, people going into the movie will struggle to see what all the fuss was about.

That's assuming anyone is watching the movie 10-15 years from now. I think it will most likely be forgotten among the general public in a couple of years.

In all honesty I think about 95-99% of all movies get forgotten after a few years, so that isn’t saying much. As for this movie it’s been trending so I think more are checking it out than originally admitted would as distance is starting to set in now that it’s out of theaters and not a lightening rod.

 

[TP2000]

Shouldn't you be withholding judgement until you see how many boys with an eye patch show up at your door on Halloween?

That's a HUGE part of my tracking system. We've got a man staring at an entire panel of blinky lights just for Halloween.

But after last night's Target run, something tells me I won't be seeing any eye patches four and a half months from now.

 

[TP2000]

ShopDisney.com only has one plastic figure playset and three T-shirts on offer for Elio. Either Disney Corporate knew they had a stinker that wasn't worth merchandising with this movie, or they are still smarting over the disastrous performance of the Lightyear and Wish merchandise. What a shame.

Wouldn't you love to know how they decide how many toys to design and produce for the marketplace?

The lag time on designing them, getting them past legal and safety standards, some Chinese slave factory getting the order to produce, and then the toys and t-shirts actually showing up in a Target in Utah must be at least six months. A year?

So why didn't they do any toys at all for Elio? And if not, at what point in its production did they realize and say "Oh, darnit, this one won't sell anything." and forget about merchandise sales in the parks and big box stores?

Pixar sold over $10 Billion in boys toys and t-shirts for their movie Cars. It was that huge merchandise sales that convinced Burbank to greenlight $600 Million (in 2008 dollars, over a Billion today!) to build the fabulous Cars Land in DCA. Obviously not every movie can be a Cars for merchandise, but almost no merch at all doesn't make sense for Pixar.

No one can convince me they purposely greenlight a mega-budget movie in Emeryville and decide early on "Yeah, let's give up on merchandise sales for this one, it won't sell anything." So at what point in Elio's production cycle did they realize there was no reason to send out production orders for America's toy aisles????

 

[Disney Irish]

Has anyone ever thought that maybe, just maybe, that our highly unscientific and inaccurate polling of a few store shelves and a cursory look at the Disney Store website just doesn't yield the reality of potential merch sales about a particular movie? Now maybe Disney dropped the ball for this movie, or maybe they purposely didn't ship to Target's in Utah, or maybe things just aren't as they seem and merch is being directed to the Parks instead or other places they are being targeting for specific merch sales.

Hollywood Studios Has the NEW Out-of-This-World 'Elio' Merchandise Collection!

Hollywood Studios has the NEW out-of-this-world 'Elio' merchandise collection!

mickeyblog.com

OFFICIAL Elio Merch & Shirts | Hot Topic

On the hunt for Elio shirts, gifts, and merch out of this universe? You’re in the right orbit. Take a look, a scroll, & deep-space scan @ Hot Topic’s Elio merch shop.

www.hottopic.com