Wish (Walt Disney Animation - November 2023)

[brideck]

Spoiler Alert: That's exactly what the free market has done for the past two years for Disney pretty much all movies; not buy tickets.

FTFY. The box office this year will be lucky to match even 2006's cume, and that's without even accounting for inflation like you've done in every chart in this thread. I think you'd have to go back to the '80s to find numbers this lousy with the adjustment. Sounds like a fun project for someone.

If you do some estimating of total number of moviegoers based on average ticket prices, you'll find that somewhere around 1/3 of the pre-pandemic theater audience just hasn't come back since then. And it was already down about 20% from where it was at the turn of the millennium.

 

[Sandra Anthony]

Penelope is live action.

In 2023, I wish that Walt Disney Animation's film 'WISH' commemorates the studio's remarkable 100-year legacy with a cinematic masterpiece. May it enchant audiences with innovative storytelling, breathtaking animation, and a celebration of the timeless magic that has defined Disney throughout the decades. May 'WISH' be a beacon of creativity, weaving together the nostalgia of the past and the brilliance of the future, ensuring that the studio's centennial is not just a milestone but a testament to its enduring influence on the world of animation and storytelling. Here's to a wish for another century of enchanting tales from Disney.

 

[LittleBuford]

Putting aside words and phrases that you feel are Wrongspeak...

I have no idea what this is is reference to.

why do you think Disney films bomb at the box office now, one after another after another?

Unlike some of you, I don’t pretend do know the answer. I’ve offered some thoughts on the matter several times already and see no reason to repeat them here.

And your solution is to double down and put in more gay characters holding hands and quickly pecking each other on the cheek for no real reason that advances the plot until the parents finally give in and buy tickets to Disney movies again en masse?

I have never pushed for any such “solution”.

 

[brideck]

I don't think it's been mentioned in here already and it's a bit of a diversion on my part, but I just saw that Disney is releasing Soul, Turning Red, and Luca to theaters in Jan/Feb/Mar 2024. I imagine those'll be $5 releases so probably won't have too much impact at the box office, but it'll be interesting to see how that works out and if that helps hasten Wish out of theaters.

 

[MoonRakerSCM]

Luca is a great little film, Soul lacked soul, and Turning Red was meh.

Soul was most disappointing for me as I was really looking forward to it. I play jazz and the film just fell flat for me musically... it never went beyond 'ok' imo. Never ran away with it and did anything memorable.

 

[Farerb]

Luca is a great little film, Soul lacked soul, and Turning Red was meh.

Soul was most disappointing for me as I was really looking forward to it. I play jazz and the film just fell flat for me musically... it never went beyond 'ok' imo. Never ran away with it and did anything memorable.

It had potential to explore interesting ideas but by the end it devolved into another Pixar buddy comedy formula with body switching and a cat.

 

[Hawkeye_2018]

Soul and Lightyear are two of my least liked Pixar films.

The kids and I really liked Onward. Surprised that film never got more love.

 

[LittleBuford]

Soul and Lightyear are two of my least liked Pixar films.

The kids and I really liked Onward. Surprised that film never got more love.

Same here.

 

[Ghost93]

Look, I saw the movie and I assure you that Wish is not agenda driven. Lightyear and Strange World partly yes, but WIsh is like a classic DIsney movie we know and love.....well, more or less to you guys. By the way, I told you Grace Randolph is wrong for Wish including LGBTQ character because I don't see one at all. Nice try, Gracie!

Grace Randolph originally said that the Star character could change genders. Based on early concept art and reports of the earlier pitches of Star being a humanoid shape-shifter, I could see how that MIGHT have been inferred to be genderfluid representation. Obviously, they didn't go in that direction in the final version of the film.

 

[Ghost93]

If you do a google search of “Disney Wish political” you will find a bunch of crazy stories from crazy websites come flying up that disagree.

I said "valid" criticisms.

 

[Sir_Cliff]

Story:
I'm a little surprised to see so many people being confused by the story or saying that there's nothing/little in it for adults. To us, it read as a very strong warning against authoritarianism. Life under Magnifico seems perfectly fine, except that you have to give up your most closely-held dream and forget you ever had it, all for the chance that it might come true someday. Except for most people it will never come true. Not because of lack of merit or even just random dumb luck, but because someone explicitly decides that it can't. In exchange, you get a safe and quiet life that's actually empty in comparison, if you know what those dreams were. Willful ignorance is pretty sweet, right?

I had the same interpretation of the film's message, though to me it seemed under-developed in the sense that they made life in Rosas under Magnifico look too good and didn't really address the potential issues of swinging toward the more individualistic system for which Asha was fighting. At least for me, it was hard to turn my brain off from asking what was going to happen when people start getting frustrated that they can't make their wishes come true and when they are having to pay for everything themselves rather than having it granted by Magnifico. Will Rosas survive as an ethnically diverse society that opens its arms to immigrants amidst the big adjustments that lie ahead? Sadly, it doesn't look like we'll have a sequel to give us the answer!

Overall, it just seemed to me like there must be a smarter way to write about the dangers of authoritarianism without such an easy alternative of everyone just following their own individual wishes and desires.

 

[PrinceCharming617]

Yeah, I don't like the look of this movie dudes and dudettes. It seems to have colors, but somehow doesn't look colorful. Like when my television was broken and everything looked faded.

 

[Sir_Cliff]

Yeah, I don't like the look of this movie dudes and dudettes. It seems to have colors, but somehow doesn't look colorful. Like when my television was broken and everything looked faded.

I was sceptical of the animation based on the previews, but I actually thought it worked quite well on the big screen. That said, the person I saw it with commented afterwards that she didn't like the animation.

 

[Disstevefan1]

Can we agree that Wish is not a bad movie, its just that it will not make money because the costs to make and market Disney movies are WAY TOO HIGH, and today its a requirement that a given movie MUST be a MEGA HIT in order to break even or make some money.

Its either that or hope that in the very long run they can make money from merch?

 

[Phroobar]

Can we agree that Wish is not a bad movie, its just that it will not make money because the costs to make and market Disney movies are WAY TOO HIGH, and today its a requirement that a given movie MUST be a MEGA HIT in order to break even or make some money.

Its either that or hope that in the very long run they can make money from merch?

No. It is a bad movie. The story really was pretty undercooked and the characters don't grow. The supporting characters are two dimensional at best. The songs were fairly mediocre with stupid lyrics that really didn't contribute as they should have. Looking at stores, no one is buying the merch.

 

[LittleBuford]

No. It is a bad movie. The story really was pretty undercooked and the characters don't grow. The supporting characters are two dimensional at best. The songs were fairly mediocre with stupid lyrics that really didn't contribute as they should have. Looking at stores, no one is buying the merch.

If I’m not mistaken, you haven’t seen it. How can you give such a definitive review?

 

[Disstevefan1]

No. It is a bad movie. The story really was pretty undercooked and the characters don't grow. The supporting characters are two dimensional at best. The songs were fairly mediocre with stupid lyrics that really didn't contribute as they should have. Looking at stores, no one is buying the merch.

Ok, it’s a “bad” movie that has made $105 Million world wide so far. If they could have kept the costs down some how they could have broken even or even make money

Look at Godzilla, world wide 49 Million so far. Godzilla as we know has made back costs and is making money.

Five nights is a pile of cr@p, also made money.

It always come back to costs, and in the old days, movie studios always enforced budgets.

 

[brideck]

I really think that the bigger issue is that Disney has trained its core audience to not bother with the theater and wait for D+, which is an even worse business plan.

If I can follow-up my own post with some fuzzy math. Feel free to poke holes in this, I'm just spitballing here.

Let's take Strange World as an example here:

It made just shy of $38 million (domestic) in the theaters. If you divide that by the average ticket price in 2022 of $10.53, you can see that roughly 3.5 million people saw it there. This is far less than mild pre-pandemic hits like Coco (23.5 million people) and way less than smashes like Frozen II (50 million people+).

In its first week on Disney+, per Nielsen it earned 527 million minutes watched. If you divide that by its runtime of 102 minutes, that's over 5 million private viewings. The average household size in the US is 3.13. Multiply by that and you get around 16 million people who watched it in week 1.

I'm not about to say that all 16 million D+ watchers would have run out to see it in the theaters in the absence of D+. I'm sure there have always been people who have just waited for Disney movies to hit VHS & DVD. However, the audience of people who is still interested in the new animated releases is clearly still there. It's just shifted online. These people watched it immediately on release, despite all the recent talk of how it was "bad" or "a bomb". If even half of them had seen it in theaters instead, that would be another $85 million at the box office.

Oh, right, and it earned 753 million minutes watched in week 2. And those are considered bad numbers for streaming.

 

[Ghost93]

Can we agree that Wish is not a bad movie, its just that it will not make money because the costs to make and market Disney movies are WAY TOO HIGH, and today its a requirement that a given movie MUST be a MEGA HIT in order to break even or make some money.

Its either that or hope that in the very long run they can make money from merch?

It has nothing to do with today's market. Even if Wish's budget was slashed in half, it would still be a flop. Notorious box office disappointments like Atlantis made substantially more money than Wish, and that was over 20 years ago.

Adjusted for inflation, mega flops like Treasure Planet made more than Wish.

 

[brideck]

I had the same interpretation of the film's message, though to me it seemed under-developed in the sense that they made life in Rosas under Magnifico look too good

I'd surmise that this is actually some of the point. After all, plenty of intelligent, well-meaning people live under authoritarian regimes even today, and most of them remain content (or are even enthusiastic) to do so. If a viewer finds themselves thinking that life didn't seem so bad under Magnifico, that the tradeoffs made for security and a relatively empty happiness are worth it, then that probably says something about the viewer and how they would think about a real-world analogue. The film was trying to challenge its viewers to consider whether this is really okay or not. Asha (and by extension, probably the writers) didn't think so. Audiences need not agree.