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It's not really surprising for me, given that all the early December wide releases went belly-up instantly, a lot of the awards-bait titles are getting one screen at the most (especially outside big cities), and there's next to nothing opening wide this month. Moana 2 is still hanging about, why...

It is if you look at the basic plot beats -- Moana wants to explore the seas (further this time) and sings a song about it, it turns out her island will die out if she doesn't do so For Reasons, there's a curse that has to be broken that only she can handle, she and Heihei (and the pig and a...

Yeah, I got the sense that a lot of people just found Moana 2 adequate at best (not least because the songs were duds) but reading over the plot it was at least coherent in a way Wish isn't.

Another thing to keep in mind with Mufasa is that it has most of theaters' available showtimes in extra-charge specialty formats like IMAX, Real 3D, Dolby Cinema, 4DX, etc. sewn up, and apparently those are making up a fair chunk of the take - so the actual number of tickets sold is that much...

Yeah, that's cutting it awfully close, especially if Lilo & Stitch is as big a hit as early enthusiasm for it suggests it can be. Elio's home stretch ad campaign can't start until after Lilo's. And it opens the same day as the How to Train Your Dragon remake. The inherent problem with the 2025...

Yeah, I do wonder if the goodwill the original Zootopia has is as strong as what Moana has. Disney was slower-than-expected to capitalize on both the way they did with Frozen and even Big Hero 6, and that just made people more excited for Moana 2 once it was finally announced as a movie, but...

Family-friendly movies in the first half of 2024 were nonexistent aside from Kung Fu Panda 4 and IF, (I've heard anecdotal evidence that one reason Godzilla X Kong performed as well as it did was because at least kids wanted to see that) and neither of those had the kind of pop culture footprint...

That's still a really impressive opening, and considerably ahead of Mufasa. (And Wonka on the equivalent pre-Christmas weekend last year, and look what legs that had.) No, but Disney probably expected big things out of a continuation of their biggest non-Marvel hit of 2019. I'm mixing metaphors...

I get what you're saying here -- imagine if Moana 2 had been more than "fine" for most viewers, how much better it might have done. If there's a zeitgeist-capturing, chatter-inspiring blockbuster this season, it's Wicked Part I, even if the box office numbers are bigger for Moana 2. And Zootopia...

How so? It's playing ultra-wide in theaters around the world at the biggest time of year for the box office in many countries. I'm not sure how it would be performing better unless it wasn't going up against a title that seems to appeal more to actual children. It's rather like what happened...

I don't think the legs are going to kick in (or at least, given it is Christmastime, not strongly) for Mufasa if this first weekend is a disappointment, any more than they did for Solo - A Star Wars Story (which this is getting a lot of comparisons to!), Strange World, or Wish. (Remember all the...

That's an interesting thing this year - films like that, Dune Part Two, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (which like Wicked didn't rustle up much international business) seem to have been more memorable for audiences than the billion-dollar club of Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, and (probably!)...

The other day on Bluesky someone posted a photo of a plushy they won in a claw machine game - it was Star, but they had no idea what it was and what it was from! (Which got me thinking - Star was really a nothingburger of a character, no? We have no idea what motivates them, what its...

Yeah, anybody who tries to make excuses like "It's for kids/fans" or "It's not for critics" if it's in regards to the actual artistic execution of the work comes off to me as an apologist for a lack of effort. We saw this last year with apologists for Wish and that's just keeping it to WDFAS...

No one says she's actually THE character in question, any more than King Magnifico is . Both would be raising way too many questions if they were so.

Sad but true. There are lovely, mature animated films being produced internationally but they'll never be considered in the American-centric Oscar race for Best Picture, and American feature animation just doesn't have "the sauce" or whatever The Kids are calling it these days to get that far.

Non-animated/Disney musicals tend to be tough international sells. Bear in mind that Wicked hasn't been released in Japan yet (I believe they're waiting until March on that), and the musical is rather popular there, so it could do well.

Some of the animators who worked on the film spoke to IGN about the film's production. https://www.ign.com/articles/inside-out-2-was-the-hit-pixar-needed-but-the-laid-off-employees-who-crunched-on-it-are-still-hurting

I think if there is a "rule" it should be that the movie is not a critical and/or commercial failure. Princess and the Frog wasn't AS big as it could have been at the box office but critics liked it. (By some metrics Tangled didn't prove profitable theatrically because the budget got way out of...

I'm thinking this might have to do with the fact that well, they did bring out some new merchandise this year (i.e. the limited edition fashion doll) because they wrongly assumed the movie would be a hit and there would be demand for it that far out, and didn't want to be caught unprepared as...