Disney Irish
Premium Member
This isn’t industry wide and certainly isn’t in all content so I disagree.
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Disney (and others) at the Box Office - Current State of Affairs
- Thread starter Disney Analyst
- Start date
Haven’t paid much attention, but looks like Moana 2 needs 167 more million to hit 1 billion.
Do we think it has the legs?
Do we think it has the legs?
DisneyWarrior27
Active Member
Disgruntled Walt
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
No. Too much other stuff out there now to take the kiddies to.
DisneyWarrior27
Active Member
And yet Moana is probably gonna hit $900M WW on New Year’s Eve.
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
It needs to be comfortably 950+ million by next Sunday. Which is two weekends and a holiday week.
CinematicFusion
Well-Known Member
Not the same… Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was created for an adult audience, explicitly designed to challenge societal norms and foster meaningful dialogue on racial equality. Comparing it to the recent removal of a transgender storyline from a children’s show like Win or Lose ignores the vastly different audience and purpose.
Disney’s decision was not about removing LGBTQ representation. The company has stood firmly behind inclusivity, as evidenced by Strange World, which features an openly gay lead character—unchanged and fully intact on Disney+.
However, Disney has chosen to respect parental preferences, acknowledging that many families prefer to address complex topics, such as gender identity, on their own timeline.
What’s happening now is not unprecedented nor antithetical to the country’s ideals. It’s a nuanced approach to representation that balances inclusivity with the developmental needs of young audiences. Representation remains a priority, but context and audience matter just as much.
DisneyWarrior27
Active Member
Is it really gonna matter if censoring art will soon hurt the quality of the movie?
CinematicFusion
Well-Known Member
I don’t think it’s about ‘censoring art’ so much as it is about making sure content is appropriate for the audience it’s intended for. Disney has always tailored its stories for families, and if they choose to adjust content to align with that mission, they’re just staying true to their brand. Quality doesn’t have to suffer if the storytelling is thoughtful and well-crafted.
When it comes to topics like gender identity for younger audiences, it’s not really about censorship, it’s about giving parents the ability to introduce these ideas to their kids in a way that feels right for their family. Disney+ could easily implement a feature that allows parents to toggle certain themes on or off, giving them more control while still letting Disney tell diverse stories. That way, everyone wins: the art stays intact, and families have the choice to decide what’s right for them.
Animaniac93-98
Well-Known Member
If Moana 2 finishes with $450 million domestically, it would have made about 50% of that during its first 5 days of release
Disney animated movies tend to have much better holds than that. Frozen 2 made about 1/3 of its US gross during its 5-day opening weekend (also a record at the time).
That after such a massive opening we're not 100% sure it will hit a billion worldwide is indicative of less than amazing word of mouth. Moana is clearly popular, and there was demand to see a sequel, but this is what happens when you throw together a sequel at the last minute, and it will probably hurt the live-action remake an inevitable Moana 3.
Vegas Disney Fan
Well-Known Member
The Disney box office is a bit of a head scratcher, the Lion King live action remake was surprisingly high, Mufasa seems surprisingly low, IO2 was surprisingly high, I wouldn’t say Moana2 is surprisingly low (at nearly a billion) but it’s definitely lower than I expected given IO2s shocking box office.
There’s got to be executives at Disney scratching their heads wondering how and why some movies blow up while very similar movies are struggling to meet expectations.
I’m sure they’re pleased overall with 2024 but there’s got to be a little confusion regarding it also.
There’s got to be executives at Disney scratching their heads wondering how and why some movies blow up while very similar movies are struggling to meet expectations.
I’m sure they’re pleased overall with 2024 but there’s got to be a little confusion regarding it also.
Casper Gutman
Well-Known Member
So in the 60s and 70s it would have been alright if studios censored interracial relationships and friendships from media so long as that media might have been viewed by children? It would have been fine if that censorship was the result of direct governmental pressure?
You are being incredibly disingenuous here, pretending Disney “chose” to remove this content. They were pressured into it by an extremely high profile, multi-pronged campaign on the part of the state and federal government that included but was not limited to both legislative and legal action. That’s profoundly unprecedented and unconstitutional, no matter how inconvenient that fact is to your beliefs.
You are also trying to limit this to LGBTQ content. In fact, we now have reporting that Disney management is removing environmental themes from an upcoming Pixar film. Environmental messaging has been the safest, most banal type of content in children’s media for decades. Its removal is a demonstration of the extent of Disney’s capitulation and the complete irrelevance of the “parental oversight” talking point.
The idea that this isn’t “industry wide” is extremely naive. The point of these attacks on the most recognizable media company in the world and that media company’s total capitulation is to chill every other media company’s speech. That’s exactly what we’re seeing.
This is not something that can be handwaved away. This is not a fleeting news story. This is how countries change in ways that are nearly impossible to reverse. It’s a historical inflection point. On a more specific level, it will effect every story Disney and other studios tell.
TalkingHead
Well-Known Member
The inability of studios to launch new franchises and the diminishing returns on established franchises, combined with the growth of streaming, means big changes will happen in the next few years.
Think about it: 2024 had the highest grossing animated film in history and the highest grossing R-rated film in history (not to mention the highest grossing Broadway adaptation in history, and Moana 2), and the box office for the year is still going to be less for 2024 than it was in 2023.
TalkingHead
Well-Known Member
Is this guy on Disney’s SPECTACULAR payroll? The fact that movie fan discourse is so consumed with box office tells you how doomed the business is.
Maybe we should think about this more like.. Sonisafa?!
They seem to be playing nicely together.
Farerb
Well-Known Member
Mufasa is not a head scratcher. People love the original film, hence why the remake managed to gross a billion in its second week. However people didn't care for the remake (if they did it would have grossed more than $2 billion), so they didn't bother with its prequel.
Inside Out and Moana are beloved films whose gross was good even if neither managed to gross more than a billion, but since their initial release they have become even more beloved and popular through Blu-ray or streaming and that resulted in good box office numbers for their sequels.
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
Indeed. Only Deadpool, Apes and Alien have really landed roughly where I thought they would. Though I think Mufasa is doing better than I was expecting, I was really thinking it was heading to lose money.
I think Moana 2’s holds are very attributable to its quality. Inside Out 2 still makes no sense… it wasn’t that good nor that big of a franchise.
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
It’s certainly not great and they (Disney) are at least still a decade behind Illumination / Dreamworks in terms of over-milking what they have left. The latter of which has killed Secret Life of Pets and wringing the heck out of Despicable Me… to the point they’ve had to turn outward to find real success with Nintendo.
At least Disney has hit Encanto, which is definitely a franchise. But we need like 5 new franchises a decade, not one. They are riding the coat tails of an exceptional decade for franchise starters, maybe only outdone by themselves in the 90’s (including Toy Story in the renaissance mix).
We still have Coco, probably Big Hero ‘Seven’ and an Encanto follow up to go before every newer franchise is being rung into the 3rd and 4th installment.