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

[TalkingHead]

These are all fine points and I was hyperbolic in my comment. Obviously Snow White is not a film only known by or liked by old people. But I would postulate that the age of a film very much pertains to its relevance. 90s rennaisance era animated films like The Lion King, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast are much more culturally relevant than films like Snow White, Pinnochio, and Dumbo. I don't think this is the main reason for the film's financial struggles, but I do think it contributed.

If so it’s evidence of how Disney under Iger has failed to leverage the company’s pre-1990s catalog.

 

[Agent H]

“A little underdeveloped” is an understatement. The Prince in the original doesn’t even have a name and has less than 3 minutes of screen time.

According to my research Disney France and Disney On Ice have referred to him in the past as prince Florian.

 

[Farerb]

According to my research Disney France and Disney On Ice have referred to him in the past as prince Florian.

They didn't give him a name originally just like The Evil Queen or Cinderella's prince or The Beast. Their names were invented by fans or marketing.

 

[Agent H]

They didn't give him a name originally just like The Evil Queen or Cinderella's prince or The Beast. Their names were invented by fans or marketing.

Cinderellas prince didn’t have a name originally? I thought it was always Prince Charming.

 

[Farerb]

Cinderellas prince didn’t have a name originally? I thought it was always Prince Charming.

He was never called Charming. It was Snow White who called her prince Charming. Cinderella never did.

 

[Agent H]

He was never called Charming. It was Snow White who called her prince Charming. Cinderella never did.

Yeah I do remember hearing something when I was a kid about how the prince was the same person as the prince from Cinderella and he was a dirty two timer. Yes I understand how crazy that sounds. They are obviously two different characters. In any case the one from Cinderella will always be Prince Charming to me.

 

[Farerb]

Talking about Princes - one interesting thing about the remake is that they gave the "not a prince" the plotline of Prince Phillip being captured by Maleficent (Evil Queen) and then gets free to save Aurora (Snow White). The truth is that Walt wanted to do it originally in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but it was dropped because of limitations. It was later revived for Sleeping Beauty.

Another thing that was revived in Sleeping Beauty was the Prince and Princess dancing on a cloud. It was originally meant for Cinderella and there's even a deleted song.

 

[WorldExplorer]

Talking about Princes - one interesting thing about the remake is that they gave the "not a prince" the plotline of Prince Phillip being captured by Maleficent (Evil Queen) and then gets free to save Aurora (Snow White). The truth is that Walt wanted to do it originally in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but it was dropped because of limitations. It was later revived for Sleeping Beauty.

Another thing that was revived in Sleeping Beauty was the Prince and Princess dancing on a cloud. It was originally meant for Cinderella and there's even a deleted song.

I can't find the source, but I believe at one point they also considered a thing where the Prince and Evil Queen were in conflict because Snow White's dad was actually the latest in a line of kings she forced to marry her and she was turning to his kingdom next.

Not sure where I read it, though.

 

[BrianLo]

Since you’re the numbers guru, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of business Stitch will need to do to cover the eventual loss here.

I don't know if the 150M budget figure I'm seeing is accurate. If so that seems pretty reasonable starting point for Stitch

Maybe starting at 775M to also cover the loss of Snow, on the high end 900M.

(In these ranges Stitch would be safely making like 200-250M, which seems like the loss Snow is heading for).

 

[BrianLo]

This is shocking for me, I expected this movie to struggle but this is far beyond even my worst expectations, I remember arguing over a year ago that Disney was in too deep to write this movie off but I’m starting to think they may have lost less had they just written off $250 million and got a tax write off.

My original guess (over a month ago) was a $100 million loss, after the predictions fell under $50 million for opening weekend I started thinking it would be a $200 million loss, now I’m starting to wonder if this could be a $300 million loss… and that’s based on a $500 million break even point, I’ve seen estimates over $600 million for the break even point, this thing has the potential to lose $400 million, that’s absolutely insane.

Any hope of a big second weekend turning the tide seems to be lost.

Your numbers are too high there. It has the potential to lose 200-250 million, which is less than production holding company will have ultimately rung up at the time of release (like 375M or so). That loss is still a "tax credit" as it were, but they don't need to bury the film to access it.

The only way it would have made sense to write it off is if the back end and box office can't cover marketing (from the point of deciding to cancel it) and distribution fees. That's almost impossible not to have covered, box office receipts would need to approach zero and they'd have to have a sheer disinterest of post market buyers.

The reason we've seen some of the D+ productions be written off is that the box office was empirically zero and there was more to gain by having the service own up to having overpaid for it. This film on the other hand is already in an isolated production subsidiary. Snow won't be overpaid for by D+, because its value is largely already being determined by the box office window.

 

[BlakeW39]

Because the “Snow White is a dated IP that no one really remembers or cares for” is a transparently pathetic excuse conjured up by a few posters here over the course of the last week.

Disney’s Snow White is a year older than Superman, and two years older than Batman. And it came out two years earlier than The Wizard of Oz, which did not seem to hurt the enthusiasm or awareness of Wicked Pt. 1.

Maybe the demarcation point for when IP is hopelessly old is 1938?

Huh, what a ridiculous comparison. Superman & Batman appear in countless TV shows, movies, and comic books on the regular basis. The date they were first created is completely irrelevant because they are not defined by their first appearances. At all. Comparing these characters to Snow White is just deliberately obtuse.

Snow White is definitely not an IP that no one remembers or cares for... but I do think Snow White's age has to do with why we'll see it become less successful than The Little Mermaid for instance, or any of the rennaisance remakes.

 

[erasure fan1]

You are purposely leaving off the rest of the post intentionally so you can get mad because you want to take the second part out of context and make it about something else.

Here is the post -


I didn't realize I needed to break it down further but here goes.

The 50/50 being talked about here is the voting block, which represents only ~150M total people who voted in the last election not the ~340ish M total people that live in the country, which is only about ~40ish % of the population that voted. Of that ~150M that voted, 50% voted for one candidate and 50% voted for the other candidate. Meaning that its only 20-25% of the entire ~340M people is who voted for the current occupant of the Oval Office. So that is not 50% of the country, its only 50% of a voting block.

So clearly the second paragraph is talking about how Zelger's post is being framed by many (I did not target you specifically because many here try to say the same thing) as her insulting half the country, when in fact her post is only about those that voted for a certain candidate which represents only 20-25% of the entire population.

No where did I claim anything about the other 75% of the population. You're trying to infer your own meaning into my post that clearly wasn't there.

Your digging.

I just dislike when people frame it as half the country being insulted when its really less than a quarter.

You are clearly talking about HALF the country. Not the voting population. And it's funny because you said that about me when I was asking the percentage of the vote. You are clearly being disingenuous. Or you don't want to just say sorry, I didn't phrase it right. Either way it doesn't matter because the agendas are clear around here. Here's my question. You said you never said anything about 75%. So if less than 25% of all people were offended. How many were not?

 

[Serpico Jones]

What a disaster. It almost makes me miss Michael Eisner!

 

[Chi84]

Your digging.

You are clearly talking about HALF the country. Not the voting population. And it's funny because you said that about me when I was asking the percentage of the vote. You are clearly being disingenuous. Or you don't want to just say sorry, I didn't phrase it right. Either way it doesn't matter because the agendas are clear around here. Here's my question. You said you never said anything about 75%. So if less than 25% of all people were offended. How many were not?

I would guess upwards of 75% of the country were not offended by her remarks. That would include the amount who never heard them, heard them but didn’t care about them or heard them and agreed with them.

It’s probably a much higher number if you’re talking about all the people in the country because that number would include the very young

 

[LittleBuford]

I think it’s fair to say that if you showed her comments to every adult in the country, around half would feel she was referring to them or people like them and feel to varying degrees irked or insulted. However, this does not take into account the following:

• A large number of people probably have no idea any of this is going on, so it’s really difficult to assess how impactful her comments were. That the film is doing poorly the world over suggests that we should be expanding our framework beyond American politics.
• Being irritated by what an actor says doesn’t necessarily lead to the decision to boycott the things they appear in. I should think most people aren’t that invested in the personal beliefs of the entertainers they watch.
• Many people on the other “side” also find her remarks ill-advised. No-one here, as I recall, has said she was right to say what she did.
• If this thread is anything to go by, those who find her words unforgivable seem already to have decided they disliked her back when she shared her feelings on the original film. I can’t think of a single poster here whose views on Zegler switched after her November outburst.

 

[Chi84]

I think it’s fair to say that if you showed her comments to every adult in the country, around half would feel she was referring to them or people like them and feel to varying degrees irked or insulted. However, this does not take into account the following:

• A large number of people probably have no idea any of this is going on, so it’s really difficult to assess how impactful her comments were. That the film is doing poorly the world over suggests that we should be expanding our framework beyond American politics.
• Being irritated by what an actor says doesn’t necessarily lead to the decision to boycott the things they appear in. I should think most people aren’t that invested in the personal beliefs of the entertainers they watch.
• Many people on the other “side” also find her remarks ill-advised. No-one here, as I recall, has said she was right to say what she did.
• If this thread is anything to go by, those who find her words unforgivable seem already to have decided they disliked her back when she shared her feelings on the original film. I can’t think of a single poster here whose views on Zegler switched after her November outburst.

Why would people who didn’t vote at all think she was talking about them?

 

[LittleBuford]

Why would people who didn’t vote at all think she was talking about them?

Because many people who don’t vote still support the same positions and individuals as those who do.

 

[Farerb]

What a disaster. It almost makes me miss Michael Eisner!

Eisner enjoyed having people around who actually cared about the art and the legacy rather than making a profit (they're all gone now), but he also had the same issues that Iger has. I always need to remind people of the awful DTVs that completely damaged the reputation of Disney, hand drawn animation and the original movies that received these treatments.

I'll say this in favor of Eisner is that at least he allowed the filmmakers to take more risks compared to Iger who just demands every movie to be the same, but I guess it also has to do with the culture at Hollywood at the time (less focused on franchises and more originality and creativity).

 

[erasure fan1]

I would guess upwards of 75% of the country were not offended by her remarks. That would include the amount who never heard them, heard them but didn’t care about them or heard them and agreed with them.

It’s probably a much higher number if you’re talking about all the people in the country because that number would include the very young.

And that's a fine answer. The issue in this whole thing is hypocrisy. I respect you saying you'd guess it's upwards of 75%. You might be right. But your answer would be no more right than me saying it potentially offended half the country. I could be right too. Neither one of us has data on everyone. I don't want to be lectured about not having facts, only to be countered with made up facts. And the post I was replying to was clearly saying 25% of the public, not voting public. And that's just as made up as anything.

 

[Chi84]

And that's a fine answer. The issue in this whole thing is hypocrisy. I respect you saying you'd guess it's upwards of 75%. You might be right. But your answer would be no more right than me saying it potentially offended half the country. I could be right too. Neither one of us has data on everyone. I don't want to be lectured about not having facts, only to be countered with made up facts. And the post I was replying to was clearly saying 25% of the public, not voting public. And that's just as made up as anything.

I lost you. Who said she offended half the country? I thought the idea was that Snow White is doing poorly because Zegler offended half the country with her political comment.