When streaming is too successful
Why watch a new Disney movie in theaters when it will be on TV in a few weeks?
Also in this issue: Iran’s elementary school in London is pretty much what you’d expect, and so is Harvard University; and, Donald Trump’s resemblance to the most beloved movie character of our generation.
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I was surprised when Pixar’s Lightyear, reimagining a popular character from a truly beloved franchise, seriously underperformed at the box office. I’m not at all surprised by Strange World flopping.
Not because it’s a bad movie - I haven’t seen it, and box office performance certainly doesn’t correlate to the quality of a film1 - but because I couldn’t shake the belief that it was streaming on Disney+ even after seeing ads which said “only in theaters.”
As "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" continued to top the box office over the Thanksgiving holiday – earning $63 million over a five-day period -- a new Disney movie tanked at $4.2 million on Wednesday.
The animated movie, "Strange World" boasted a budget of $180 million, as the disappointing results – over a five-day period -- totaled just $24 million, according to Variety.
The plummeting box office results of Disney’s "Strange World" comes on the heels of the announcement of Bob Iger returning as chief executive of the Walt Disney Company after less than a year in retirement.
That extremely generic title certainly didn’t help. When I started writing this post I kept calling it Strange Planet, and I wonder how many people who did see the movie kept wondering when the overly literal aliens would show up.
Because it’s 2022 there has to be a stupid culture-war fight about the movie, too, and as with Lightyear some people might have been put off by the inclusion of a g-g-g-gay character in Strange World.
Well, maybe. Again, I didn’t even know about that until after the film came out (no pun intended) and flopped.
I’ve had Disney+ off and on2 for the past few years, and it’s probably the best of all the premium streaming services because of the Disney and 20th Century Fox libraries. (They need to bump up their true-crime documentary game, but I’m sure they’re working on that.)
Problem is, when there’s already a shipping-container-load of Disney and Pixar animated classics to watch at home, the argument for taking out a new mortgage and hauling your kids to the movie theatre becomes much less compelling. Plus, Disney has sent several of its new animated films, like Pixar’s Turning Red, directly to streaming without a theatrical release, confusing audiences further.
Of course, there are some movies people will make a point of seeing on the big screen: Marvel Cinematic Universe films, also made by Disney and currently dominating the box office with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Like fighting a war on two fronts, promoting two mega-budget blockbuster movies simultaneously is a struggle even for a company with seemingly limitless resources.
Disney is by far the largest of the Hollywood studios - only Warner Brothers comes close in terms of having so many major franchises, and they seemingly have no idea what to do with any of them - but I find myself wondering if they’ve overextended themselves. Not even they have truly unlimited resources, and when you’re competing against yourself and against other big companies making I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Disney animated films, something has to give.
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