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

[Ghost93]

I think you’re reading more into my statement than I meant…

I’m not saying knowing about gay people causes a loss of innocence, I’m saying talking about sexuality in general creates a loss of innocence. When people decide their children are ready for “the talk“ will vary greatly by kid.

You don't have to have "the talk" to acknowledge gay relationships.

"Some boys like boys and some girls like girls." Easy. Nothing about sex has to be brought up whatsoever.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

Where did Disney "push too far" in their 2023 releases? What are some examples?

Ask Iger, he’s the one that said it…

Disney CEO Bob Iger says company's movies have been too focused on messaging

Disney CEO Bob Iger acknowledged his company's movies have been too focused on messaging rather than strong storytelling.

www.cnbc.com

I’d argue they all placed messaging over story telling, but that’s purely subjective, Strange World was primarily an environmental message, Elemental was primarily an immigration message, Wish was a dont give up your dreams message, they all felt like they came up with a message they wanted to convey and then tried to piece together a story that fit that message.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

You don't have to have "the talk" to acknowledge gay relationships.

"Some boys like boys and some girls like girls." Easy. Nothing about sex has to be brought up whatsoever.

Which is exactly what I said I was comfortable explaining to children about gay relationships earlier, glad we agree.

That doesn’t mean everyone will share our opinion though.

 

[LittleBuford]

You don't have to have "the talk" to acknowledge gay relationships.

"Some boys like boys and some girls like girls." Easy. Nothing about sex has to be brought up whatsoever.

Exactly. It’s baffling this even needs to be explained.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Ask Iger, he’s the one that said it…

Disney CEO Bob Iger says company's movies have been too focused on messaging

Disney CEO Bob Iger acknowledged his company's movies have been too focused on messaging rather than strong storytelling.

www.cnbc.com

I’d argue they all placed messaging over story telling, but that’s purely subjective, Strange World was primarily an environmental message, Elemental was primarily an immigration message, Wish was a dont give up your dreams message, they all felt like they came up with a message they wanted to convey and then tried to piece together a story that fit that message.

Wait a minute…

Disney does NOT make mistakes…

And Bob Iger - greatest human ever - definitely does not.

You are a liar

 

[CinematicFusion]

Saw this earlier. The latest garbage flowing through the network. Just got amplified by Elon and is being picked up by the usual fringe “news” sources. Let’s see if it makes its way further through the circuit.

That was a lot to take in the video… that and he literally had the same conversation with two different dates.

Makes you want to see the next video when the reveal happens.

 

[Farerb]

The same is true for Beauty and the Beast with the cherry on top being that Emma Watson can‘t sing. Yet it was a critical and box office darling suffering none of the indignities Mermaid did. Good thing the hate network hadn’t set their sights on Disney in 2017 with LeFou being gay…

Beauty and the Beast had pretty much the same critical reception, it was not a critical darling. The only thing it did better than The Little Mermaid was that Menken and Rice wrote better new songs for it compared to the new songs that were written by Menken and LMM, and it had better production values. However, overall people view it as another pointless remake like the rest of them. I personally dislike it more that The Little Mermaid.

 

[CinematicFusion]

By the way, the big news here seems to be that a disgruntled guy (VP of Business Affairs for 20th Television) is blaming minorities because he hasn’t been promoted as much as he thinks he should have been.

He didn’t sound disgruntled, that’s was the weird part.

 

[TP2000]

By the way, the big news here seems to be that a disgruntled guy (VP of Business Affairs for 20th Television) is blaming minorities because he hasn’t been promoted as much as he thinks he should have been.

He barely looks 40 years old, 45 with Botox and fillers tops, and he's a Senior Vice President at the Walt Disney Company.

What's left above that SVP pay grade?

As far as I understand it, the only thing above a Senior Vice President at Disney is a dozen or so Presidents and a small handful of Chairmen. And the guy is barely 40.

From his own words and the transcript of the video, he wasn't talking about himself. He was talking about people beneath him, who would report to him. That video is 15 minutes of his own words, so not sure how The Hate Network made that up.

 

[BrianLo]

Mermaid flatlined domestically in about 3 weeks too…which puts it right with the awful Disney Star Wars standard

This is not factual. I know you probably tuned out the run, but it continued to make an entire Strange World domestically (or 2x) after you declared it finished last June.

Mermaid did fine domestically. It had a fairly normal box office course. If you want to attack it and call it low-normal, whatever, but it’s pretty within the distribution of average. It was certainly lower than they wanted, but it wasn’t a disaster.

Little Mermaid made money. Little Mermaid was actually a mild success domestically. Its international prospects held it back. You have six other movies that demonstrate actual disasters to work with.

It’s gonna clear $200-$300 mil at the box office…
Goalposts on wheels

And thank you for so clearly setting your own goal post. 300 million was in fact an okay performance. Though disappointing.

But we need to correctly categorize things in this thread if we want to maintain a semblance of actual facts. A movie that did almost 8x more box office than Strange World doesn’t deserve to be placed in the same box.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

This is not factual. I know you probably tuned out the run, but it continued to make an entire Strange World domestically (or 2x) after you declared it finished last June.

Mermaid did fine domestically. It had a fairly normal box office course. If you want to attack it and call it low-normal, whatever, but it’s pretty within the distribution of average. It was certainly lower than they wanted, but it wasn’t a disaster.

Little Mermaid made money. Little Mermaid was actually a mild success domestically. Its international prospects held it back. You have six other movies that demonstrate actual disasters to work with.

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And thank you for so clearly setting your own goal post. 300 million was in fact an okay performance. Though disappointing.

But we need to correctly categorize things in this thread if we want to maintain a semblance of actual facts. A movie that did almost 8x more box office than Strange World doesn’t deserve to be placed in the same box.

We’ve been over this too about 100 times:

Mermaid limped…it made about half what Disney was expecting

Not a hard mental jump to make. Aladdin made a billion…there’s your “zone”

I’m saying inside of will CLEAR $200-300…so like $850? Or more? To be clear

 

[BrianLo]

We’ve been over this too about 100 times:

Mermaid limped…it made about half what Disney was expecting

Not a hard mental jump to make. Aladdin made a billion…there’s your “zone”

I’m saying inside of will CLEAR $200-300…so like $850? Or more? To be clear

No, it didn’t limp. It simply never left the gate internationally. Yes, it definitely made like half of what they were hoping for, for sure. I think they had prospects of 1 billion as well.

Inside out 2 will clear 500 million domestically. Which is definitely not a benchmark of success, that’s a benchmark of an unbelievable banging animated blockbuster.

TLM could have done fairly reasonably if international showed up and the reason it comes up 100 million times is mostly because you bring it up first of all. Then secondly, it’s actually fairly interestingly mixed performance that doesn’t tell a clear story if you want to look at everything from one lens. We’ve seen that with all the films that actually were out and out flops that followed it (sans Elemental).

 

[erasure fan1]

You literally edited out a portion of my post and then responded as though I had very specifically never said the part you edited out. I'm not the one shifting things here. It was deceptive, intentional or not.

It wasn't deceptive, I'll be more than happy to respond to it. But I'm not really sure what point I missed.

You try to "both sides" it, as you do here. You claim it is nothing new or exceptional. You try to argue it's a meaningless. powerless, fringe phenomenon.

Again, how is admitting it's there but not as impactful to Disneys box office playing both sides? See, you talk about being mischaracterized, yet I never said meaningless, fringe phenomenon. That's just sensationalizing my opinion. Just because I don't think it's hurt Disneys films as much as you do, doesn't mean I think it's meaningless. Do I think it all stems from a vocal minority? Yes I do. Because if you think it's the majority of people, what hope is left?

These are in no way, shape, or form equivalent "garbage," and their impact is not equivalent either.

Why? They're both trying to push something. Lightyear was in no way an exhilarating sci-fi experience for fans of toy story. Because it's positive? So you don't think a review like that isn't sensationalizing how good the movie is? It's most likely in rebuttal to idiots like the other review, but that doesn't make it somehow justifiable.

However, the campaign - which I'll remind you included a high profile attack by a prominent presidential candidate - was a significant factor in the performance of Disney's 2023 slate.

Yea, and in my opinion it ruined his chances. I know lots of people who were on his side until the Disney stuff.

For films like Mermaid, yes, the campaign probably meant the difference between being a clear hit and a slight underperformer.

Again, if someone had a problem with Ariels race, they aren't going to go see it. No matter what the attackers say. So I don't get how it makes it a clear hit? And I don't subscribe to the everyone is brainwashed theory.

I'm "shouting" because what I am saying is continually mischaracterized. You edited out a passage of my writing to do so.

It's not because I missed something on one post. It's a common occurrence with you interacting with plenty of posters.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

No, it didn’t limp. It simply never left the gate internationally. Yes, it definitely made like half of what they were hoping for, for sure. I think they had prospects of 1 billion as well.

Inside out 2 will clear 500 million domestically. Which is definitely not a benchmark of success, that’s a benchmark of an unbelievable banging animated blockbuster.

TLM could have done fairly reasonably if international showed up and the reason it comes up 100 million times is mostly because you bring it up first of all. Then secondly, it’s actually fairly interestingly mixed performance that doesn’t tell a clear story if you want to look at everything from one lens. We’ve seen that with all the films that actually were out and out flops that followed it (sans Elemental).

IO 2 is at $235/203/$438

TP comes here once a week and translates where that ends up…stay tuned. mermaid was hurt by international…but it didn’t sink it

BATB made $508 domestic…Aladdin (not an easy sell) made $355 domestic

I get it…you are down with the network

Mermaid didn’t draw well enough anywhere

Have you seen it? It’s a useless endeavour
These remakes have become burden on the audience

Now if you want to talk about THAT? I’ll buy

 

[BrianLo]

Have you seen it? It’s a useless endeavour
These remakes have become burden on the audience

Yes I did and didn’t think it was good. I can still analyze the box office separately from my thoughts.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Yes I did and didn’t think it was good. I can still analyze the box office separately from my thoughts.

Well then there’s 2 of us…maybe we’re contagious?

 

[Ghost93]

How did we even get here in this discussion? Inside Out 2 — a good Disney movie — is doing phenomenally at the box office so this should theoretically be a happy time for all Disney fans. I do fear Disney may learn the wrong lessons (such as focusing more on franchises/sequels rather than prioritizing quality storytelling), but after such a disastrous 2023 this seems like good news for the company.

 

[TalkingHead]

Had the Inside Out series been announced before this week? Because seeing Disney return to milking a successful franchise into what is sure to be diminishing returns shows they are so, so back.

Unfortunately the bar is higher for Moana and Lion King. Those things have to operate like Barbie or the underperformance narrative is gonna ramp up. Again.

 

[TP2000]

Had the Inside Out series been announced before this week? Because seeing Disney return to milking a successful franchise into what is sure to be diminishing returns shows they are so, so back.

While we wait for the Thursday box office to show up to inform what this weekend without any new major releases will be like, here's how Inside Out 2's opening weekend stacks up against Inside Out and some of the previous franchise sequels, and with Elemental thrown in because Inside Out 2 will obviously beat it handily (not that hard to do, really).

These figures have been adjusted for inflation since the 2010's, unfortunately for grocery shoppers.

 

[brideck]

Unfortunately the bar is higher for Moana and Lion King. Those things have to operate like Barbie or the underperformance narrative is gonna ramp up. Again.

Why would both of those movies need to operate like Barbie? Early days, but Inside Out 2 is already doing that. If Disney is building its business plan (and if posters here are building their expectations around) every tentpole being a colossal outlying success, that's terribly unrealistic. Even if they are all of a similar, steady quality, that's just so unlikely to happen.