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

[LittleBuford]

I’m not sure what word best describes it, but perhaps people would better understand the network (or whatever you want to call it) that @Casper Gutman is describing if we considered the demonstrable and undeniable impact it’s had within this very forum. As multiple threads here demonstrate, a good number of posters routinely come to these discussions with very definite thoughts on films they’ve never seen and have no interest in watching. They’ll tell us, with absolute certainty, that this film pushes a certain agenda, or that film vilifies men, and so on and so forth. Where are they getting these notions—most of which are recycled with minimal variation, and many of which have little do with the films they purport to describe—if not from the network of outlets and commentators that @Casper Gutman is pointing to? How else can we explain the prevalence of certain highly predictable characterisations coming from multiple individuals who seem broadly aligned in their worldview and who have no firsthand experience of the films they’re commenting on with such ostensible authority?

 

[DKampy]

Well, we’re talking about people who never saw the film to form an opinion about it in the first place—people who supposedly harbour such prejudice towards the gay community that they can’t bear the thought of their children knowing about its existence. But that’s OK, because the world is imperfect and we queers should remain patient for a few more centuries while our poor overwhelmed straight counterparts get used to us.

I still believe most of the world don’t have a prejudice agenda…a few loud voices are trying to excuse their own bigotty… and strange World was an easy target because it was a historic failure for the Disney company... It is why the hits with even more woke messaging such as Barbie, Elemental, Peacemaker, The Boys… you don’t hear much noise… they have to look like their bigotry is what the world feels… it helps them excuse the own prejudices in their heads… it is about time the world shows this minority accept inclusiveness or get left behind

 

[BrianLo]

I can't disagree with this, even though I rather enjoyed Strange World. I was strangely very much in the crosshairs for this, though. Fan of pulps? Check. Receptive to a story that is expressly showing other ways of being a man than stereotypical masculinity? Check. Concerned about climate change and/or energy production transformation? Check. Heck, I'd even coincidentally seen two of the screenwriter's plays (Vietgone and She Kills Monsters) in the month before SW's release, so I was attuned to his sense of humor, etc.

Ya, I’m just highlighting that this movie was standing out to a lot of us as a miss before it released. I think that’s the primary reason for its failure in North American market, it really wasn’t hitting off its core demo. Because this movie really, really missed in the North American market. Not just a little.

Here’s some receipts that this wasn’t merely an opinion we formed after it failed. All of which is to say there are other reasons it wasn’t connecting with even us supposedly ardent defender types.

Even if Strange World didn't have a gay kid in it, I would still be concerned about its box office prospects. The film is giving strong Atlantis/Treasure Planet vibes. While I personally enjoyed all three of those movies, each was a notorious sci-fi Disney flop. Outside of Star Wars and Lilo & Stich, Disney rarely has financial success when it comes to tackling science fiction.


Black Panther and Avatar are going to be the movies that save Disney's fourth-quarter earnings.

I definitely think Strange World will strongly underperform.

However, the vast majority of their last 10 feature films have been incredibly successful. It's a little difficult to say whether Raya left much impression and Winnie the Pooh would be the distant one on that list. It's otherwise one of their most successful runs of ten perhaps next to the Mermaid through Tarzan stretch.

Strange World seems to have a fairly uninteresting protagonist. I'm not sure anyone is rushing out to watch a movie about a Fish out of Water Dad. It's going for the 50's/60's throw back family drama flare, but Incredibles did that so much better.

Most of what they showed at their Animation Panel looked very good, Strange World I was distinctly meh on. Atlantis and Treasure Planet seem like poignant comparators.

 

[BrianLo]

The Boys… you don’t hear much noise…

The Boys is actually having a fun moment. Suddenly the angry echo chamber as I’ll call it is watching the newest season from a different lens and realizing it has been making satire of them the entire time. Which has been pretty obvious from the get go, but the list of things to be annoyed by has multiplied as it has gone on.

Even Handmaids Tale I almost have a different contextual viewing of its plausibility than when I first started watching that series many years ago. Still hopefully grossly a fairytale, but there’s more reality than there use to be.

I wonder how Disney would cope if Making of Me was an attraction still? Based on how supposedly what’s appropriate for children has been tried to be rewound 100 odd years.

 

[brideck]

Okay.

If only franchises sell now, I look forward to tracking the box office data for Planet Of The Apes 9 and Inside Out 2.

Was looking for something else in the archive entirely and stumbled upon this reaction to my analysis (similar to Dranth's) showing that IP/sequels = box office success. [You can find it on page 450, if anyone's interested.] Not looking to specifically pick on you, TP, it was just at the top of the page.

How are we feeling about this concept now? Even Apes has outstripped our early pessimistic projections. I think I said $340m-$400m WW and it's currently sitting at $376m, but is still trucking along at a steady clip somehow.

The largest wholly original movies so far this year are IF ($101m/$174m), The Fall Guy ($88m/$169m) [if you disregard the tenuous connection to an unloved TV show] and Civil War ($68m/$114m).

 

[erasure fan1]

Your quotation was, “and still, no one can point to a film that didn't deserve the box office it received.”

In the context of my post, and all the others, I'm clearly talking about the last two ish years of Disney films. That's the point at hand.

You’re trying to artificially limit examples to bolster the absurd claim that films earn what they deserve, something the entire history of popular media proves untrue.

I'm really not. Go back to my posts where I talk about how often good films don't succeed. Or how transformers made billions on some really bad films. Or go back to when I was one of very few saying Princess and the frog should have been a big success. It does happen and I've never denied that.

We aren't talking about the entire history of cinema here. We're talking about Disney and what happened with their last couple years of fims. And what movie that failed, should have been a huge success if it wasn't for the hate network pulling it down. Not that doesn't exist, not that it doesn't have an effect, not that there aren't people out to get Disney.

You are determined to pretend all the “bad things” in society are completely powerless and inconsequential, mere nuisances, and that is not a truthful or useful position.

The impasse we have is, you are on team it's killing all the movies. While I have said it has an impact, but I don't believe it is enough to hurt these movies to account for the amount of underperformance. I'm not determined to pretend anything. You know what's also not useful? Looking at everything with a jaded eye, always looking for the hidden motivation.

TLM was absolutely no worse then live-action remake blockbusters like Aladdin and Lion King and The Marvels, while suffering from a weak villain, was charming and fun and no worse then many very successful MCU films.

First off, I'd say it was worse than Aladdin and about the same as lion king. I mean the scuttlebutt is one of the worst pieces of music in a Disney anything. What it showed me, is people rejected a sub par remake of a classic. The same thing happened to me with transformers. I was opening day for the first and the second. Saw the third a bit later, and by the 4th I was waiting for rental. And the 5th? I still haven't seen. Bumblebee had good word of mouth so I saw it.

As far as the marvels. It didn't just suffer from a weak villain. Sure Iman was charming, but that film had some serious issues. And I wouldn't say Brie as one of them, she was actually more likeable in it than the first. It wasn't a good MCU film in my opinion. The story was inconsistent, do we have to bring up the singing planet, it was tough to watch in parts.

Does lightyear do better without the "controversy"? Probably a bit. But if that 10 or so minutes was never there, it's still not anywhere close to a hit.

Again, this is a futile exercise, because the “quality equals box office” argument is absurd on its face and all sorts of deserving films have underperformed in the last two years.

Two can play. Again, I never said quality equals box office. That's just what you want to hear. I've said many times, quality is your best chance for box office success in my opinion. I've also said it doesn't always work out that way. Consistent quality usually wins out in the end. But I'll say it again. Was Pixars success built on quality? Or was it built on mediocre to poor films? Pixars strong track record in quality alowed something mediocre like cars 2 to still do 560mil. If the films leading up to cars 2 were all meh, I have no doubt it doesn't do what it did.

 

[brideck]

We're talking about Disney and what happened with their last couple years of fims. And what movie that failed, should have been a huge success if it wasn't for the hate network pulling it down. Not that doesn't exist, not that it doesn't have an effect, not that there aren't people out to get Disney.

You're not going to find anyone willing to say things would have been a "huge success" because that would be a ridiculous statement to make, other than to say that a red-headed Little Mermaid remake of the same quality sadly would have made substantially more.

However, it's not ludicrous to assert that the constant sniping at Disney in the public discourse had a cumulative effect on their slate. Their 2023 movies were largely... fine. And fine Disney movies typically still make a silly amount of money. Is it unreasonable to think that they might have been able to make up the $700m shortfall (or at least most of it) if there weren't a whole lot of toxicity around Disney? I don't think so. After all, Anheuser-Busch lost $1.4b in revenue last year over the Bud Light thing.

It'll be interesting to see what sort of lessons come out of Inside Out 2's runaway success. Given where they were pre-pandemic, it's not so silly to me to think that Disney wouldn't have had to reduce their budgets. They hubristically figured that they'd be somewhat immune to the 30% audience disappearance that the market at large has suffered. IO2 is seriously asking us to consider whether that assumption is true or not. Early days, but it's on Barbie/Top Gun: Maverick pace, which is just crazy to consider.

 

[erasure fan1]

You're not going to find anyone willing to say things would have been a "huge success" because that would be a ridiculous statement to make,

Of course no one will say it. If you've seen the films how could you? Some might do a bit better, as I've said. But none in my opinion would do substantially better.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

This bears no relation to what I wrote.

It does summarize over a year of disingenuous “arguments” on this thread

And they know who they are

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Of course no one will say it. If you've seen the films how could you? Some might do a bit better, as I've said. But none in my opinion would do substantially better.

Is it because they are BAD movies?

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

The Boys is actually having a fun moment. Suddenly the angry echo chamber as I’ll call it is watching the newest season from a different lens and realizing it has been making satire of them the entire time. Which has been pretty obvious from the get go, but the list of things to be annoyed by has multiplied as it has gone on.

Even Handmaids Tale I almost have a different contextual viewing of its plausibility than when I first started watching that series many years ago. Still hopefully grossly a fairytale, but there’s more reality than there use to be.

I wonder how Disney would cope if Making of Me was an attraction still? Based on how supposedly what’s appropriate for children has been tried to be rewound 100 odd years.

Excellent

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I’m the last person to appease anyone, as my posts amply demonstrate.

You’re in line behind at least a few warlocks that represent true evil

 

[brideck]

How ambiguously made up this it!!

And so clever…just like calling everyone questioning movie quality a racist

Feel free to go to FN's category/travel/general/disney section. Load everything back to the start of 2022 (or before, if you're ambitious) and see how things change in... oh, let's say March of 2022.

 

[TP2000]

I can see how you would use it once for effect, and then they overreact and repeat it ad nauseum.

As @Casper Gutman has told you, he was the first one to use that phrase in this thread in the context of box office bombs and successes. He first said the phrase last Friday, and it was instantly hilarious to quite a few of us here.

However, they didn’t gain traction and the film was clearly going to be a success, so we aren’t likely to see a full court press. The hate network needs to appear strong and successful - they won’t waste credibility among their massive audience. It’s one of the reasons they didn’t go all in on Barbie, despite it being an exponentially more political film than anything Disney released last year.

I just used the nifty search function for this, because the phrase was repeated quite a bit after that by Mr. Gutman...

Just as recently as this past Tuesday, he used it four separate times in four different posts here. Then a gaggle of additional references to it as "the network" throughout the past 5 days.

The phrase showed up randomly, and again struck many of us here as hilarious, but the concept appears to be a global cabal or "network" of right-leaning media and bloggers and Internet comments that steer the 3 or 4 Billion consumers of American movies and entertainment on this planet to avoid certain Disney films rated G or PG that don't fit the traditional mold of Disney family films.

Because I don't think Disney should introduce gay characters into G or PG (the new G) cartoon family films aimed at young children, that they should save that material for PG-13 movies from Marvel or their other studios, I am apparently a member of The Hate Network. I haven't paid any dues money, and I haven't received a logo THN windbreaker or even a coffee mug, but I guess I'm a part of it.

I've got that and my Costco membership, but I shouldn't be bragging.

 

[brideck]

Of course no one will say it. If you've seen the films how could you? Some might do a bit better, as I've said. But none in my opinion would do substantially better.

Of course no one will say it because there's plenty of room between "huge success" and failure. My assertion (which you didn't even respond to) is that they would've done fine. It would have been a poor year, but not one deemed a colossal failure.

A failure so colossal that it looks like one massive blockbuster is going to more or less erase its memory. Or at least its financial impact.

 

[brideck]

The phrase showed up randomly, and again struck many of us here as hilarious, but the concept appears to be a global cabal or "network" of right-leaning media and bloggers and Internet comments that steer the 3 or 4 Billion consumers of American movies and entertainment on this planet to avoid certain Disney films rated G or PG that don't fit the traditional mold of Disney family films.

So... you didn't read any of that website. Cool, cool, cool.

I, too, find a trend toward increasingly toxic public discourse to be hilarious.

 

[TP2000]

So... you didn't read any of that website. Cool, cool, cool.

Actually, I did. Is there going to be a quiz? No one said today was Quiz Day.

I first read their "About" page to see who they were and where they are from. Then I skimmed their articles and read their article on Ireland which didn't really make sense to me, and next one of their articles from 2023, about gas stoves being considered to be banned by the government as "disinformation", which hilariously has turned out to be false by mid 2024. Is that disinformation?

After that hilarity that I just stumbled upon, I went back to their "About" page and read a few of the bios of their executive leadership and their odd and extremely Euro-centric outlook on life and speech. It was then clear to me that this is a group who has no use for the First Amendment and wants to police speech from an extremely Western European point of view. They also seem to make a repeated point in several parts of their website that the USA is not playing along with them or taking their advice, much less obeying, like the EU and Australia are doing currently.

That's where our Constitution and the First Amendment get in their way, gosh darnit.

So I chuckled, and closed the website. But I get the gist of what they're about; don't let people just speak out loud and state their opinions if the people with fancy degrees and titles don't like what those opinions are.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Feel free to go to FN's category/travel/general/disney section. Load everything back to the start of 2022 (or before, if you're ambitious) and see how things change in... oh, let's say March of 2022.

Sure…If you tell me what FN is?

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Of course no one will say it because there's plenty of room between "huge success" and failure. My assertion (which you didn't even respond to) is that they would've done fine. It would have been a poor year, but not one deemed a colossal failure.

A failure so colossal that it looks like one massive blockbuster is going to more or less erase its memory. Or at least its financial impact.

Taking $50-$200 mil write down on tentpoles with recognizable IP are not “marginal” failures

They are firmly in that category

 

[TP2000]

Sure…If you tell me what FN is?

Oh, no, another unknown acronym? Wasn't it just yesterday when we were told to go read "ISD" as if anyone had ever heard of that before, so several of us Googled and all we got was various school districts in our Google search.

Apparently you must have a Google search history that delves broadly into "hate networks" to get the right results. Fascinating to think what the search histories are like to trigger that algorithm, isn't it?