'Lightyear' Coming Summer 2022

[MarvelCharacterNerd]

I continue to be baffled how Burbank can spend $200 Million on an animated movie, while other studios spend less than half that.

Minions films are made in France.

Illumination Studios Paris

Pixar films are made in the tech hub of $Northern California$. Disney animated films are made in Hollywood-adjacent $Southern California$.

Or wherever their workers were remotely working from.

 

[erasure fan1]

And the sooner all the people on here who haven’t seen it but want to trash it will actually see it and maybe even like it.

Maybe. I'm sure I'll watch it when it hits D+, and maybe I'll even like it. That said, Disney needs to figure out the marketing side of things since they're so gung ho on D+. You can't lay an egg selling your film as people will just say, meh whatever, I'll catch it on D+. You rarely get more than one chance to create that excitement for your film. Maybe the answer is Disney doesn't care. If the film does great theatrically, bonus. If not, oh well it's more padding for D+.

 

[TP2000]

Before Lightyear, the previous Pixar movie that had a wide release and wasn't affected by the pandemic was Toy Story 4, whose Box Office was $1B...

Pixar ain't floundering.

Your patently erroneous take, however, is floundering.

By your own stats, Pixar hasn't had a box office hit in over three years now. They get to blame the pandemic for 2020 and even '21, but that doesn't make the huge financial losses from those years go away. Both studios needed to enter the post-Covid box office year of 2022 firing on all eight cylinders. That hasn't happened.

Walt Disney Animation needs a big hit. Pixar needs a big hit even more desperately.

Until they both start having hits that can create even a slim profit, I have to wonder why on earth Burbank keeps funding two flagship animation studios. Now that "Disney" animation looks more like Pixar, and Pixar animation looks more "Disney", what's the business plan there?

 

[TP2000]

After dinner tonight, I ran an errand into town and driving home with the top down on quiet, beachy, residential streets there was a little boy about 5 years old riding his tricycle with his 30 year old Dad trailing a few feet behind. The boy was decked out head-to-toe in full Batman costumery. Batman suit, mask, headpiece, shoe coverings. I smiled and waved at Dad, and he waved and smiled back proud as punch.

In mid July, over three months from Halloween. For no apparent reason other than that he's 5 years old and going for a tricycle ride after dinner with Dad and he needed to show his Batman skills off to the neighborhood.

That's the exact demographic that should have gone to see Lightyear; Dads and their little boys. But they stayed away. That has to change for Pixar to have a viable, and profitable, future. Know your audience for Godsakes!

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

But then you put all the movies in between Toy Story 4 and Lightyear in the flop category, and wrongly so. They didn't have the usual wide release. We have no valid B.O. numbers to judge them.

Onward “flopped” opening weekend though - 39M Domestic.

I personally think Soul, Luca and Turning Red would have done well in theaters and I’m pretty certain Soul did help Disney+ subscriptions during that time.

 

[TP2000]

Onward “flopped” opening weekend though - 39M Domestic.

I personally think Soul, Luca and Turning Red would have done well in theaters and I’m pretty certain Soul did help Disney+ subscriptions during that time.

Thanks. I fully understand that Covid threw the movie studios, all of them, for a loop. But that doesn't erase the financial losses incurred during that time, nor does it excuse the weak performance of movies now being released in 2022.

The studios that are riding the huge pent-up demand for moviegoing are laughing all the way to the bank. Spiderman, Top Gun, Jurassic Whatever, and now Minions. Disney is running two separate, flagship animation studios that are 350 miles apart at great expense. They both needed to exit the Covid Era with big hits.

So far, they have both failed.

 

[TP2000]

Minions films are made in France.

Illumination Studios Paris

Pixar films are made in the tech hub of $Northern California$. Disney animated films are made in Hollywood-adjacent $Southern California$.

Or wherever their workers were remotely working from.

View attachment 652774

That "Created & Produced" title card is unintentionally hysterical!

They should have just gone full-honesty on that one, and said instead "And in homes stocked with at least two cases of Two Buck Chuck Chardonnay throughout the Bay Area".

 

[Sharon&Susan]

Minions films are made in France.

Illumination Studios Paris

Pixar films are made in the tech hub of $Northern California$. Disney animated films are made in Hollywood-adjacent $Southern California$.

Or wherever their workers were remotely working from.

View attachment 652774

I would guess this is only part of the reason Pixar and Disney's budgets are so out of control, as Dreamworks (located in Glendale) has been able to create quite a few movies in recent years that cost less than 100 million.

 

[Disney Irish]

Before Lightyear, the previous Pixar movie that had a wide release and wasn't affected by the pandemic was Toy Story 4, whose Box Office was $1B.

Before that, Incredibles 2 with a B.O. of $1.2B.

Before that, Coco, at $.8B.

You keep pointing out that Lightyear flopped in the B.O., and rightly so. It did.

But then you put all the movies in between Toy Story 4 and Lightyear in the flop category, and wrongly so. They didn't have the usual wide release. We have no valid B.O. numbers to judge them.

We do, however, have the ratings from critics and audiences, and all the movies from Coco to Turning Red have high marks.

Pixar ain't floundering.

Your patently erroneous take, however, is floundering.

Turning Red, BTW, still shows up in Nielsen's top ten streaming movies. As of last month, it had 8 Billion viewing minutes. Luca had 10 Billion.

I'd also be curious to see Disney's total BO at the end of 2022, Lightyear might only be a small blip compared to Disney's total slice of the BO pie. For example Thor4 and BP2 could end up with $1.5B-$2B just for those two movies alone, which will more than make up for the losses for Lightyear.

 

[TP2000]

I'd also be curious to see Disney's total BO at the end of 2022, Lightyear might only be a small blip compared to Disney's total slice of the BO pie. For example Thor4 and BP2 could end up with $1.5B-$2B just for those two movies alone, which will more than make up for the losses for Lightyear.

Although, you'd have to factor in how much Burbank spent overall on all of it's studios; Pixar, Walt Disney Animation, Walt Disney Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Marvel, LucasFilm, etc.

Using the "Triple The Production Budget" formula that @MisterPenguin laid out for us, will Burbank as a whole have made any profit in 2022? That's assuming that a live action film like Thor, or God forbid West Side Story, also uses the same "Triple The Production Budget" accounting formula that an animated picture does.

 

[TP2000]

According to Google, the next Pixar release doesn't show up for another year. There's nothing coming this Thanksgiving or Christmas, and nothing next Easter. It's not until June, 2023 that the next Pixar film debuts with Elemental.

Can they last that long after costing the parent company a few hundred million dollars with Lightyear, plus the money losing direct-to-Disney+ stuff like Turning Red and Luca?

What exactly are they doing on that sprawling and lavishly funded Emeryville campus? How many catered lunches can one production team eat? And how many Very Brave Walk-Outs! by three dozen 27 year old production assistants does it take to make a 95 minute long film that will then flop in Ohio multiplexes?

P.S. I love the random people eating lunch in the background, totally ignoring the fashionable and very brave Virtue Signaling going on behind them. Hysterical!

 

[Disney Irish]

Although, you'd have to factor in how much Burbank spent overall on all of it's studios; Pixar, Walt Disney Animation, Walt Disney Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Marvel, LucasFilm, etc.

Using the "Triple The Production Budget" formula that @MisterPenguin laid out for us, will Burbank as a whole have made any profit in 2022? That's assuming that a live action film like Thor, or God forbid West Side Story, also uses the same "Triple The Production Budget" accounting formula that an animated picture does.

Well that goes without saying. Like I said though 2 films in their entire 2022 slate of films will pull in somewhere between $1.5B-$2B, because Marvel is a money printing machine. So those alone will cover the loses of Lightyear. Anything after that, as they say, is all gravy.

So yeah I'm betting that 2022 will be a good year for TWDC's slate of films, even if one or two of them individually didn't perform well.

According to Google, the next Pixar release doesn't show up for another year. There's nothing coming this Thanksgiving or Christmas, and nothing next Easter. It's not until June, 2023 that the next Pixar film debuts with Elemental.

Can they last that long after costing the parent company a few hundred million dollars with Lightyear, plus the money losing direct-to-Disney+ stuff like Turning Red and Luca?

What exactly are they doing on that sprawling and lavishly funded Emeryville campus? How many catered lunches can one production team eat? And how many Very Brave Walk-Outs! by three dozen 27 year old production assistants does it take to make a 95 minute long film that will then flop in Ohio multiplexes?

P.S. I love the random people eating lunch in the background, totally ignoring the fashionable and very brave Virtue Signaling going on behind them. Hysterical!

You keep asking if Pixar can survive, lets answer this once and for all, YES!!!!

The studio will survive as long as Disney wants it to. Its not going anywhere, no matter how many times you keep asking that question.

 

[MisterPenguin]

According to Google, the next Pixar release doesn't show up for another year. There's nothing coming this Thanksgiving or Christmas, and nothing next Easter. It's not until June, 2023 that the next Pixar film debuts with Elemental.

Can they last that long after costing the parent company a few hundred million dollars with Lightyear, plus the money losing direct-to-Disney+ stuff like Turning Red and Luca?

What exactly are they doing on that sprawling and lavishly funded Emeryville campus? How many catered lunches can one production team eat? And how many Very Brave Walk-Outs! by three dozen 27 year old production assistants does it take to make a 95 minute long film that will then flop in Ohio multiplexes?

P.S. I love the random people eating lunch in the background, totally ignoring the fashionable and very brave Virtue Signaling going on behind them. Hysterical!

You want to know how Pixar can survive with one underperforming movie and a gap until the next movie.

That is a serious question.

But when you juxtapose that question with making fun of the studio, that tells me that the question isn't so serious.

It tells me your question is asked in bad faith. You don't really want to know. You ignore information already given you above about how movies continue to earn money post-theatrically. You "innocently" ask the question in a way that you're already posing the answer: Pixar's about to fail!!

This is exactly what agents provocateur do to undermine the thing they're working against.

I'M ONLY ASKING THE QUESTION!!! (and giving an answer and mocking them and trying to garner an emotional antipathy toward them...) BUT I'M ONLY ASKING THE QUESTION.

You have displayed an outstanding ignorance of how the film industry operates. So, no, you're not just asking the question. You're attacking.

You're trolling.

 

[TP2000]

You want to know how Pixar can survive with one underperforming movie and a gap until the next movie.

That is a serious question.

It is a serious question. But it's also now several financially underpeforming movies (due to Covid) and a year-long gap until the next movie. With a lot of lawn to water up in Emeryville during a drought.

But when you juxtapose that question with making fun of the studio, that tells me that the question isn't so serious.

I can make fun of lots of things about Disney; basically anything they do that is puffed up, smug, and/or pretentious. I've been doing that here since joining this discussion site 20 years ago, it's not new. I'll continue.

It tells me your question is asked in bad faith. You don't really want to know. You ignore information already given you above about how movies continue to earn money post-theatrically. You "innocently" ask the question in a way that you're already posing the answer: Pixar's about to fail!!

Your answer to how Lightyear will earn money post-theatrically was that DVD sales and Sox merchandise will save them somehow. That was baffling, and seems to ignore that DVD sales have already tanked for the entire industry by 2022 and that Sox just isn't a thing.

This is exactly what agents provocateur do to undermine the thing they're working against.

It's a message board about theme parks. It's silly and fun. I don't think we need to throw fancy French words around needlessly, do we?

You have displayed an outstanding ignorance of how the film industry operates. So, no, you're not just asking the question. You're attacking.

Through the course of this fascinating thread I am now of the opinion that having two separate and very expensive flagship animation studios is no longer sustainable for Burbank. Why does Pixar exist separate from Walt Disney Animation? I can't figure how it pencils out for them anymore, especially now that Lassetter is long gone as a protector, and the products now look and feel nearly identical. Not to mention production budgets of $200 Million per film.

If you disagree and think Pixar and WDAS will continue to exist on campuses 350 miles apart, that's fine. But I won't be at all surprised when Pixar gets merged into WDAS and they sell the Emeryville campus to condo developers.

 

[spacemt354]

It is a serious question. But it's also now several financially underpeforming movies (due to Covid) and a year-long gap until the next movie. With a lot of lawn to water up in Emeryville during a drought.

I don't see your posts as trolling, but perhaps bringing light to a possibility that the Pixar Studios that exists right now may not operate in the same capacity down the road.

It's not a sustainable business model to have $200 Million budgets for either box office bombs or direct to streaming releases where the ROI pales in comparison to something like the previously releases of Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4.

I don't think Lightyear will be the sole film to sink the company, however its lack of performance puts a lot more pressure on the next 3 slated films, Elemental and the 2 scheduled for 2024, to decide Pixar's future.

 

[TP2000]

Well that goes without saying. Like I said though 2 films in their entire 2022 slate of films will pull in somewhere between $1.5B-$2B, because Marvel is a money printing machine. So those alone will cover the loses of Lightyear. Anything after that, as they say, is all gravy.

So yeah I'm betting that 2022 will be a good year for TWDC's slate of films, even if one or two of them individually didn't perform well.

That got me thinking... What is the 2022 list of movies from The Walt Disney Company that actually sold, or will sell, tickets to customers in theaters? Instead of just going Direct-To-Streaming for 8 bucks. (And there's a bunch of those!)

Here's the list of 2022 films headed to actual theaters from Walt Disney, Pixar, Disney Animation, Marvel, LucasFilm, 20th Century, Searchlight. Plus their production budgets and global box office sales thus far, in chronological order.

Death On The Nile, 20th Century: $90 Million Budget, $137 Million Box Office
Doctor Strange Multiverse of Madness, Marvel: $200 Million Budget, $954 Million Box Office
Bob's Burgers, 20th Century: $38 Million Budget, $34 Million Box Office
Lightyear, Pixar: $200 Million Budget, $205 Million Box Office
Thor: Love & Thunder, Marvel: $250 Million Budget, $329 Million Box Office (as of 7/12/22)
Brahmastra, Walt Disney Pictures: $43 Million Budget
See How They Run, Searchlight: $50 Million Budget
Banshees of Inisherin, Searchlight: $100 Million Budget
Amsterdam, 20th Century: $60 Million Budget
Wakanda Forever, Marvel: $250 Million Budget
The Menu, Searchlight: $75 Million Budget
Strange World, Walt Disney Animation: $150 Million Budget
Avatar 2, 20th Century: $250 Million Budget

Total 2022 Production Budget = $1.756 Billion
Triple The Production Budget = $5.268 Billion
Total Global Box Office Thru July 12th = $1.659 Billion

So, using @MisterPenguin 's basic formula of a studio needing to see triple the production budget to earn a profit, the Walt Disney Company's collection of flagship studios needs to make an additional $3.6 Billion in box office ticket sales over the next six months to break even for 2022.

Or, if you use a far more conservative estimate of double the box office to cover your costs, that's still $1.8 Billion in box office ticket sales needed over the next six months. Wakanda Forever and Avatar both need to be blockbusters going beyond the $750 Million global box office threshold this Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Home

www.boxofficemojo.com

 

[MarvelCharacterNerd]

I would guess this is only part of the reason Pixar and Disney's budgets are so out of control, as Dreamworks (located in Glendale) has been able to create quite a few movies in recent years that cost less than 100 million.

This applies beyond the scope of Disney films.

One could also point out that Universal can build an entire theme park for what Disney spends to create one land with two attractions in it.

One side might argue "you pay more for higher quality".

The other side might argue "spending that much for so little return is bad management".

Time will tell which approach ultimately works.

 

[lazyboy97o]

One could also point out that Universal can build an entire theme park for what Disney spends to create one land with two attractions in it.

This hasn’t been true for a awhile now.

 

[MarvelCharacterNerd]

This hasn’t been true for a awhile now.

Sorry, I've only seen the $1B price tag quoted for Epic Universe. Even if it's gone higher, they're still getting a lot more bang for their buck.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Sorry, I've only seen the $1B price tag quoted for Epic Universe. Even if it's gone higher, they're still getting a lot more bang for their buck.

South Campus is nearly a $7 billion project. I believe Beijing even ended up costing more than Shanghai.