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

[Disney Irish]

It just depends on if what they release is better. That’s what audiences will pay for…it is what it is

I don't think its that cut and dry, but agree with the sentiment.

 

[Midwest Elitist]

Yeah, I'm obviously totally uninterested in the Walt Disney Company, especially their theme parks. I've been on this website for 20 years and have posted 26,000 messages. I'm still trying to figure out why.



Oh, was she in that TV movie? Like most here, I never watched those Disney Channel movies aimed at 12 year old girls, but I really enjoyed that High School Musical street show they did at DCA! It was terribly upbeat and fun and catchy!

I guess I just forgot the show was called the "Vanessa Hudgens Street Party Celebration!"

High School Musical 2 debut was the peak of Disney channel for ratings at like 7 million. Vanessa Hudgens is an important bullet point in Disney History.

Also, the songs are really good.

We're soarin...

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I don't think its that cut and dry, but agree with the sentiment.

Audiences have been mostly retuned to see what they enjoy and forgoe those that are more fringes…

Just a simple thesis…

The most successful movies post plague have been Mario, Top Gun, Barbie and Avatar. Correlation there.

Box office may not be dead…but it has seemed to have split for sure

It holds out a lot of hope for some of Disney/pixar franchises…not as much for MCU and LFL

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

High School Musical 2 debut was the peak of Disney channel for ratings at like 7 million. Vanessa Hudgens is an important bullet point in Disney History.

Also, the songs are really good.

We're soarin...

But…it was on the Disney channel…and that only would penetrate certain audiences at that time

May get more of a wider follow if it were released today…but that’s a flawed concept too

 

[Disney Irish]

Audiences have been mostly retuned to see what they enjoy and forgoe those that are more fringes…

Just a simple thesis…

The most successful movies post plague have been Mario, Top Gun, Barbie and Avatar. Correlation there.

Box office may not be dead…but it has seemed to have split for sure

It holds out a lot of hope for some of Disney/pixar franchises…not as much for MCU and LFL

Correlation is not causation as the saying goes. There is more nuisance there than many here want to admit. Can’t just boil it down to a single point, which is why I was saying it’s not that cut and dry.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Correlation is not causation as the saying goes. There is more nuisance there than many here want to admit. Can’t just boil it down to a single point, which is why I was saying it’s not that cut and dry.

I got it…you reject the idea that Disney is in negative box office territory because they’re telling the audience what to watch…not giving them what they ask for…

No problem with that. It’s a theory. The course correction or lack thereof will say a lot about the company prospects…and the management…as it unfolds

 

[Disney Irish]

I got it…you reject the idea that Disney is in negative box office territory because they’re telling the audience what to watch…not giving them what they ask for…

No problem with that. It’s a theory. The course correction or lack thereof will say a lot about the company prospects…and the management…as it unfolds

Not what I said at all.

There is not a single reason why Disney is having box office woes. Its wrapped up in many reasons, some big some small. To keep trying to boil it down to a single reason, ie "just make better movies", is not understanding the complexity of the situation or the landscape. If it was really just that simple every single studio would never have any financial flops at the box office, ever. I already gave a summary a few posts ago of some of the reasons why, and not every one of those is going to be solved by "just make better movies", whatever that means. Its why I said its not that cut and dry.

And honestly we're repeating the same conversation that has been had many times over in this thread and others. There is no new ground going to be covered here.

Disney's first new movie of 2024 will be released in April in 2 weeks with First Omen, we'll see how it does.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Not what I said at all.

There is not a single reason why Disney is having box office woes. Its wrapped up in many reasons, some big some small. To keep trying to boil it down to a single reason, ie "just make better movies", is not understanding the complexity of the situation or the landscape. If it was really just that simple every single studio would never have any financial flops at the box office, ever. I already gave a summary a few posts ago of some of the reasons why, and not every one of those is going to be solved by "just make better movies", whatever that means. Its why I said its not that cut and dry.

And honestly we're repeating the same conversation that has been had many times over in this thread and others. There is no new ground going to be covered here.

Disney's first new movie of 2024 will be released in April in 2 weeks with First Omen, we'll see how it does.

Bull aside…for over a year, you’ve kinda just supported everything Disney has produced.

It’s not landing well. You can assume that they’re doing it wrong…or the entire movie going planet is wrong. It’s rather binary in the moment…but changes as things unfold.

 

[Disney Irish]

Bull aside…for over a year, you’ve kinda just supported everything Disney has produced.

It’s not landing well. You can assume that they’re doing it wrong…or the entire movie going planet is wrong. It’s rather binary in the moment…but changes as things unfold.

It’s not binary though, many many things can all be true at the same time. Yes some didn’t land well, that is for sure. But some did, as shown by audience scores, and most audience just chose to watch it at home instead. Again all thing can be true at the same time. There is not a single answer.

And yes I’ve supported Disney because I personally haven’t had issues with anything they produced. That is based on personal preference. But that doesn’t mean I can’t see or reason why things are happening external beyond me.

 

[Chi84]

Correlation is not causation as the saying goes. There is more nuisance there than many here want to admit. Can’t just boil it down to a single point, which is why I was saying it’s not that cut and dry.

I assume “nuisance” was the result of auto-fill but it kind of works

You’re right about people saying the same thing over and over. Maybe that’s why so few posters are left in this thread.

Not everyone posts for honest discussion. Some are just looking for attention, others like to hear themselves talk and some enjoy drama.

 

[Disney Irish]

I assume “nuisance” was the result of auto-fill but it kind of works

You’re right about people saying the same thing over and over. Maybe that’s why so few posters are left in this thread.

Not everyone posts for honest discussion. Some are just looking for attention, others like to hear themselves talk and some enjoy drama.

Lol, yes meant nuance. Downside of switching between phone and desktop sometimes.

 

[Chi84]

Lol, yes meant nuance. Downside of switching between phone and desktop sometimes.

At least I didn’t accuse you of a Freudian slip lol.

 

[BuddyThomas]

How 11-Time Oscar Nominee ‘Poor Things’ Got Rich at the Global Box Office

Yorgos Lanthimos' best picture contender was far from an assured success but has passed $100 million globally.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

 

[brideck]

I was out of town last week for work, so just catching up on the conversation here. This'll probably be the last time it's worth posting this chart, but with this weekend's BO, Poor Things has officially passed The Favourite on the domestic front.

ETA: Obviously, this isn't true when you take inflation into account. But given the general post-pandemic reduction of theater audience, it's probably overperformed by about $7.5m.

re: Oscars bump or lackthereof --

In the current market, other than the nominations bump any significant bump typically happens in the week before the Oscars in the form of Best Picture Showcases. You can see this happened with The Favourite in 2019 with the slight uptick above the label "Mar." There wasn't so much of that this year because as I mentioned awhile back, that week also happened to be when Dune 2 took over theaters. You can see this in screen counts, as Poor Things is actually now ~300 screens higher than when showcase week would have been, which is pretty unusual.

The Favourite ran all the way into mid-April. Given that Poor Things is already on Hulu, it'll be interesting to see how much post-ceremony run it continues to get. The Favourite was on pVOD before the Oscars, too, but I can't find any articles about when it was first included on a service like Hulu.

EdIt: Did The Favourite really just come to Netflix and Hulu for the first time early this year? It has to have been somewhere else before that, right? But all of the articles I'm finding about it are talking about Jan '24 for Netflix and Mar '24 for Hulu. Looks like it was on HBO for some amount of time starting in August of '19 at least.

 

[brideck]

Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos is reuniting with Emma Stone in Kind of Kindness on June 21 for searchlight Pictures

The summer date is curious as usually his films are award season plays

I'm not sure that Kinds of Kindness is any sort of awards play. It's an anthology film with 3 separate stories, which would be pretty atypical to get much attention. But who knows?

Having said that, I'm not sure what movie becomes Searchlight's awards push in 2024. Jesse Eisenberg's A Real Pain, maybe?

 

[brideck]

Disney's first new movie of 2024 will be released in April in 2 weeks with First Omen, we'll see how it does.

There's so much variance in horror BO, I'd be loathe to make a prediction here. Audiences are definitely still looking for something to glom onto in 2024, though, after both Night Swim and Imaginary have more or less cratered on arrival.

Will it be this? Will it be Sydney Sweeney's Immaculate? Who knows?

Comps in the legacy horror space would be last year's The Exorcist: Believer ($65m/$137m) or the recent Halloween sequels (post-pandemic $92m/$133m, $64m/$105m). The trailer certainly looks suitably creepy, but audiences might be burned out on stuff recycling old IPs.

 

[Disney Irish]

There's so much variance in horror BO, I'd be loathe to make a prediction here. Audiences are definitely still looking for something to glom onto in 2024, though, after both Night Swim and Imaginary have more or less cratered on arrival.

Will it be this? Will it be Sydney Sweeney's Immaculate? Who knows?

Comps in the legacy horror space would be last year's The Exorcist: Believer ($65m) or the recent Halloween sequels (post-pandemic $92m, $64m). The trailer certainly looks suitably creepy, but audiences might be burned out on stuff recycling old IPs.

I look at something like Nun 2 that did $269M WW last fall, and think Omen has potential. We'll see.

 

[brideck]

I look at something like Nun 2 that did $269M WW last fall, and think Omen has potential. We'll see.

The Conjuring universe is on a whole other level for me (especially for foreign BO), so while that might be aspirational, that would be a stretch as a comp. Having not seen any of those movies, I couldn't speak to why they've got their hooks in so many people.

 

[Disney Irish]

The Conjuring universe is on a whole other level for me (especially for foreign BO), so while that might be aspirational, that would be a stretch as a comp. Having not seen any of those movies, I couldn't speak to why they've got their hooks in so many people.

It’s the long standing Hollywood question of why one movie or franchise connects with audiences and others don’t.

 

[Tony the Tigger]

The Conjuring universe is on a whole other level for me (especially for foreign BO), so while that might be aspirational, that would be a stretch as a comp. Having not seen any of those movies, I couldn't speak to why they've got their hooks in so many people.

Some of us were aware of the Warrens from the paranormal re-enactment shows.

I prefer a good scare to a gorefest; and the smidge of “true story” makes them more scary.

The movies are just good enough, never mind blowing, but worth a fun evening at the theater.