Wish (Walt Disney Animation - November 2023)

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Wish is a historic financial disaster for the studio, no question.

But Strange World, also a tentpole Thanksgiving release, had a disastrous global box office of only $71M, BUT it had this so…

‘Strange World’ filmmakers talk diversity, box office: “It will mean a lot to a lot of people in the future”

With Disney's Strange World, animators looked to the past for creative inspiration.

www.screendaily.com

The difference is wish was supposed to hit with the bread and butter audience…

Which means they may not know what That even is anymore?

 

[TP2000]

I’d wait to see how it does on Disney+ before making any definitive pronouncements.

The division that operates Disney+ loses hundreds of millions of dollars every 90 days, fiscal year after fiscal year.

How is "wait to see how it does on Disney+" a sound financial strategy for a failed movie?

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

I’d wait to see how it does on Disney+ before making any definitive pronouncements.

I have no doubt it’ll get a ton of views the first couple weeks, the bigger question is whether people will watch it a second time.

In the last 2 years I’ve watched Moana more than Lightyear, Elemental, and Strange World combined, the same is true of Tangled, Encanto, and probably a half dozen other older Disney movies. Repeat viewing is the real value to a service like D+.

I think every new movie will do well on release week on D+, it’s the weeks after that that tell the real story though, Encanto is the only animation that’s had legs recently, everything else has been one curiosity view and then quickly forgotten.

I haven’t seen Wish yet so maybe I’ll be surprised and it’ll become the next Encanto but from the reviews I’ve seen I’m not expecting it to be a sleeper hit.

 

[LittleBuford]

I think every new movie will do well on release week on D+, it’s the weeks after that that tell the real story though

I agree. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Indeed, the post of mine that @Sirwalterraleigh quoted referred to a five-year timeframe, by which time we’ll surely whether Wish has any long-term hope.

 

[celluloid]

I wonder how they judge watch minutes. I don't think I have seen those listed.

A lot of watches with Disney Musicals get a lot of play of course because parents with kids put it on for the songs and "that part that part" the way we did with home video cassettes and later kids with dvds. Boy if those could be tracked per play.

 

[Fox&Hound]

I liked Wish- it was much better than some of their recent offerings. The characters just needed to be fleshed out, especially the protagonist and the villain. The writing was just not strong enough. It could have really benefited from another twenty minutes for character development purposes but there was some great music in it that my kids have not stopped listening to since it came out. I bought the soundtrack the same day. The movie had its flaws but I just dont see why it did so poorly. Lightyear, Strange World, and going back a ways, The Good Dinosaur, all make sense why they were flops. But this and Elemental deserved better. I feel like if they were released pre-Disney+ they both would have been huge hits in their own right.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I agree. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Indeed, the post of mine that @Sirwalterraleigh quoted referred to a five-year timeframe, by which time we’ll surely whether Wish has any long-term hope.

Hits are hits…flops are flops

I think we get confused because of Disney pushing the Princess and the frog - in particular - because it wasn’t a huge hit.

Some other notables got legs later in life…but they Weren’t flops such as wish Clearly is

Sometimes you get the bear…sometimes the bear gets you

 

[LittleBuford]

Hits are hits…flops are flops

I think we get confused because of Disney pushing the Princess and the frog - in particular - because it wasn’t a huge hit.

Some other notables got legs later in life…but they Weren’t flops such as wish Clearly is

Sometimes you get the bear…sometimes the bear gets you

Box-office flops can become quite popular in later years. To be clear, I don’t think this is likely to happen in the case of Wish, nor am I denying that the film did very poorly at the box office. But none of that has anything to do with my point, which is merely that we don’t yet (indeed can’t yet) know for certain how the film will fare with audiences in future years after it begins streaming on Disney+.

 

[Miss Rori]

I would actually argue that Wish was a bigger disaster than Strange World at least in in the face of what was expected of it. Disney gave up on Strange World well before its release with a half-hearted at best advertising push and no merchandising. Wish was undoubtedly the most-hyped Disney production since Frozen II that wasn't MCU-related, with tons of merchandising and a big advance push on social media; after all, it was the 100th anniversary movie and the kind of fairy tale fantasy that's been WDFAS's bread and butter for years. (And unlike The Princess and the Frog, which Disney opened only one week before the original Avatar, it's not like it was going up against curb-stomping competition.) And it just belly-flopped. The word of mouth never kicked in, the professional critics' reviews were not glowing at best, and scathing at worst in a way that even Strange World didn't have to endure; it was a case where underwhelming quality was genuinely upsetting for many viewers because Disney promised an all-timer.

 

[Farerb]

I don't care about Strange World, but I think it at least worked as a film. Wish tried to be the "ultimate" Disney movie without understanding what makes Disney films work, it just comes across as superficial.
I rewatched The Fox and the Hound a few days ago, and while it's not one of my favorites, it made me miss the time when these movies took their subject seriously and sincerely, without the constant "MCU humor", without winking at audience every few minutes.

 

[TP2000]

I would actually argue that Wish was a bigger disaster than Strange World at least in in the face of what was expected of it. Disney gave up on Strange World well before its release with a half-hearted at best advertising push and no merchandising. Wish was undoubtedly the most-hyped Disney production since Frozen II that wasn't MCU-related, with tons of merchandising and a big advance push on social media; after all, it was the 100th anniversary movie and the kind of fairy tale fantasy that's been WDFAS's bread and butter for years.

Exactly. I think Wish will go down in history as the absolute low-point (being optimistic that things will get better from here) in Disney's disastrous first half of the 2020's. A forced turning point, if you will. The nadir.

What's sad, and what won't go away, is that this was Disney's special 100th Anniversary! movie. Wish got all the production money it wanted, all the marketing they could muster, all the manufactured hype and buzz starting several years in advance from the biggest entertainment synergy company on the planet. At a time when parents around the globe were yearning for movies to take their kids to. And yet it was a giant flop.

Did anyone get canned for that financial and box office and pop-cultural disaster? And if not, why not?

 

[Tha Realest]

Exactly. I think Wish will go down in history as the absolute low-point (being optimistic that things will get better from here) in Disney's disastrous first half of the 2020's. A forced turning point, if you will. The nadir.

What's sad, and what won't go away, is that this was Disney's special 100th Anniversary! movie. Wish got all the production money it wanted, all the marketing they could muster, all the manufactured hype and buzz starting several years in advance from the biggest entertainment synergy company on the planet. At a time when parents around the globe were yearning for movies to take their kids to. And yet it was a giant flop.

Did anyone get canned for that financial and box office and pop-cultural disaster? And if not, why not?

View attachment 774180

Disney only fires Cast Members, not the people that greenlight stuff like this or Galactic Starcruiser.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Disney only fires Cast Members, not the people that greenlight stuff like this or Galactic Starcruiser.

A little sweatered weasel would have you believe it was chapek…

And who do we hate at lucasfilm? Gareth Edwards? The Ghost of Gary Kurtz?

 

[BuddyThomas]

Disney only fires Cast Members, not the people that greenlight stuff like this or Galactic Starcruiser.

A patently false statement.

 

[Miss Rori]

I rewatched The Fox and the Hound a few days ago, and while it's not one of my favorites, it made me miss the time when these movies took their subject seriously and sincerely, without the constant "MCU humor", without winking at audience every few minutes.

I miss those days too, though I'd argue that even before the MCU the films were having a problem with being overly jokey - it really goes back to trying to chase the success of Aladdin - and was one of the things that derailed the so-called "renaissance" era of films. But it definitely got a lot worse in the CGI era and is a key reason I never warmed to Tangled, Frozen, et.al. It's interesting that the animated features that have done well of late are either straight comedy adventures (the kind of films Illumination has cornered the market on) or sincere fantasies like the Spider-Verse films or The Boy and the Heron. And Wonka was all the more enjoyable for having natural, unforced humor.

 

[Epcot81Fan]

Exactly. I think Wish will go down in history as the absolute low-point (being optimistic that things will get better from here) in Disney's disastrous first half of the 2020's. A forced turning point, if you will. The nadir.

What's sad, and what won't go away, is that this was Disney's special 100th Anniversary! movie. Wish got all the production money it wanted, all the marketing they could muster, all the manufactured hype and buzz starting several years in advance from the biggest entertainment synergy company on the planet. At a time when parents around the globe were yearning for movies to take their kids to. And yet it was a giant flop.

Did anyone get canned for that financial and box office and pop-cultural disaster? And if not, why not?

View attachment 774180

No question that Wish had more visibility and therefore is more of an embarrassing disaster for Disney, but Strange World (in addition to its historic financial losses) may prove to have more of a longer-lasting impact on the brand.

The film's timing could not have been worse for Disney as the focus, debate, and controversy from conservative parents around the world about Disney's ideology was at its peak at that time and that film cemented in their minds (rightfully or not) that Disney films may no longer be appropriate for their children and they no longer deserve the blind loyalty they had given them for the past century.

Had Strange World been scheduled for 2024 release, my sense is it would have been pulled for "rethinking" to a later release date.

Universal, on the other hand, is glad to step into that now vacated "trusted family entertainment" spot and continues to succeed with Mario, Minions, Kung Fu Panda, Sing, Trolls, Migration, Puss in Boots, etc. and continues to (smartly) avoid all of the current culture war issues.

Time will eventually tell whose strategy makes more sense in the global marketplace.

 

[Eric Graham]

I bought the Wish soundtrack for 12 dollars, and my wife commented that no one else wanted it. Harsh... That new Minions trailer looks really funny btw.

 

[Tha Realest]

A patently false statement.

Various Cast Members have been part of massive layoffs over the last few years.

Who at WDAS or Parks lost their jobs for these multi multimillion dollar mistakes in judgment?

 

[TsWade2]

I think it's going to be a hit on DisneyPlus anyway.

 

[Eric Graham]

I was very surprised that the soundtrack to Wish only had 8 songs, while the soundtrack to Frozen had a lot more.