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Yeah, it's that ugly combination of a half-baked story, message, and characters, poor execution of such (i.e. the songs), and that this was the centennial project, "A Story 100 Years in the Making" that was explicitly advertised as in the great tradition of films like Beauty and the Beast , and...

After it was confirmed that part of the overworking of the animators on Inside Out 2 was their having to reanimate scenes so absolutely no one would even think Riley's admiration of Val was a queer crush because corporate higher-ups blamed Lightyear's failure on The Kiss, and they decided not to...

I'm not sure what you mean. It wouldn't have had the 100th to capitalize upon in the marketing if it came out this year, and it didn't have much else going for it as a film. Being an original concept it wouldn't have had a built-in audience to draw upon to way Moana 2 does, and the reviews...

I'm frustrated by how Disney corporate won't learn the right lessons from this film's (and Inside Out 2's) huge financial success -- namely to properly capitalize on their familiar properties with high-quality work and to use those successes to keep creating high-quality new films that can...

It does still puzzle me why Wish didn't get anywhere with families with that A-, even given some competition between Trolls Band Together and Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Arguably Disney's marketing and merchandising push was much more robust and wide than Moana 2's has been.

According to The Hollywood Reporter early tracking has Sonic the Hedgehog 3 getting the edge over Mufasa once they open head to head. If Moana 2 is all Disney focuses on after this first weekend in terms of promotion...well, that wouldn't help its chances.

This isn't really relevant anymore, as all 14 Baum-penned Oz novels are now public domain, as are some of the successor novels by Ruth Plumly Thompson. (In fact, there are a surprising number of low-budget Oz-inspired movies, miniseries, and TV shows out there that just don't get talked up.) So...

The Rotten Tomatoes score at the moment is 67% critics, 89% audiences. Poking around social media, there's a fair split with audience responses -- some people love it, a goodly deal think it's fine but not as good as the first (which is in line with a lot of the professional notices), and a lot...

I made a mistake - the review embargo doesn't drop until Tuesday at noon in the Eastern time zone (the early screenings start that night). https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/moana-2-reviews-are-shaking-disneys-confidence-in-sequel/ar-AA1ubutG

Yeah, this is an exceptional start for both movies, and even if Moana 2 is as big as a lot of people here expect/hope it will be it will probably have a positive knock-on effect for them, though Wicked would be the more obvious beneficiary. Also keep in mind that Moana 2 is a lot shorter than...

Yeah, I think the film will let the material breathe more. I was surprised by how smooth the pacing was in this first installment given its length; having never seen the live show, I was wondering how rushed some of the side material must have been in it (particularly the Animals plot thread). I...

Well, it has already been teased that Frozen III and IV are going to be two halves of one narrative, and they do have to stretch out what remaining titles they have that haven't been remade...

I think Mufasa can be a hit but not at the expense of Wicked; there's a whole month in between the two after all. I'd be more worried Moana 2 would get in the way of Mufasa being a bigger hit. Especially given that Disney clearly didn't think Mufasa could carry them through the holiday season on...

An interesting theory I've heard is that Dwayne Johnson is too booked up promoting Red One to do a lot of promo for this film, and who else could they send out on the talk show circuit? (I remember a common scapegoat for why Wish bombed was that the promo interviews with the cast, etc. didn't...

In general people who've listened to the song previews - the end credit version of "Beyond" has been officially released for instance - haven't been too impressed. Reading the "Beyond" lyrics I have to agree that they come off way too close to those of "Into the Unknown" for comfort, which also...

Right, the project isn't a Burbank studio one anyway, and Miranda was working on other projects including Mufasa - The Lion King so bringing him back even at the 11th hour (when they decided to retool it as a feature) probably wasn't in the cards. An interesting issue I've seen on social media...

You'd think they'd learned their lesson after Wish, especially given this is going to theaters partially to save face after that film!

My understanding is that the animation "engine" used for Paperman was insanely expensive in practice just for a short, which is why they've never used it again and certainly not for a feature-length project. I'm not sure why Disney would turn the Tiana series (if it's even still a thing, given...

I get why they still had to release the back-to-school and Christmas items this year, but selling an extremely expensive ($99.99) doll now? They weren't this generous to Treasure Planet or Strange World! Now that it's almost been a year, it's wild how this movie has been "memory-holed", as the...

Yeah, I think because there's three A-level titles opening in less than a week's time no one wants to predict a blowout for any single one of them and be proven wrong. Not to mention how very, very wrong the Thanksgiving predictions were last year; Wish was expected to be an easy first place for...