Disney Continues to Flop at Box Office with WISH, THE MARVELS
By Movieguide® Contributor
Disney’s box office performance continues to flounder into the holiday season, with WISH and THE MARVELS falling flat.
WISH opened over the Thanksgiving weekend, placing third at the box office behind THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES and NAPOLEON. The musical fantasy brought in $31.7 million – a massive underperformance for an animated Disney movie.
THE MARVELS performed worse, as it only grossed $9.2 million in its second week, putting it on track to be the worst-performing Marvel movie of all time.
With most Disney movies costing roughly $200 million to create and an additional $100 million for advertising, nearly every Disney movie released this year has failed. Despite nearly a dozen new releases, many of which were continuations of existing IP, only two movies found real success.
The live-action remake of THE LITTLE MERMAID managed to bring a large audience to theaters. However, its $569 million gross is a far cry from the $1.66 billion captured by THE LION KING in 2019.
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXAY VOL. 3 also found widespread success, grossing $845 million to close off the trilogy.
With a month left in 2023, it appears that this will be the first year since 2014 – apart from the pandemic-constricted 2020 and 2021 – that Disney does not hit $1 billion with one of its releases.
“Disney set an impossibly high bar for itself during the 2010s, firing every cannon in its arsenal,” said Shawn Robbins, Chief Analyst at Boxoffice Pro. “The downside to success is that it becomes expected every time. The studio was always going to be in a challenging position when the well started to run dry.”
In recent years, Disney has leaned heavily on titles such as Marvel and Star Wars, which fans have come to grow tired of. They are now clamoring for new stories, which Disney has struggled to deliver.
A large factor in this difficulty comes from Disney’s commitment to an immoral, liberal agenda. It has spent billions of dollars on animated kid’s movies that featured stories that were not family-friendly or uplifting. Because of this, it has failed to capture an audience and has eroded parents’ trust in its storytelling.
Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, largely blames the former CEO, Bob Chapek, for the company’s current state, particularly the over-saturation of its primary IPs. Since reprising his role as the head of the company last November, Iger has worked to get the company back on track. Unfortunately, he is heavily committed to the immoral themes that continue to damage Disney’s business.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Disney has had a terrible year, with few wins to offset its many misses, and CEO Bob Iger looks to address this and explain how things will be different in the future.
“I looked at our overall output, meaning the studio, it’s clear that the pandemic created a lot of challenges creatively for everybody, including us,” Iger said. “In addition, at the time the pandemic hit, we were leaning into a huge increase in how much we were making and I’ve always felt that quantity can be actually negative when it comes to quality. And I think that’s exactly what happened. We lost some focus.”
Since the launch of Disney+, quantity has been an issue that has plagued some of Disney’s most prized franchises. It has relied on Star Wars and Marvel content to bring in subscribers, creating an overflow that has overwhelmed all but the most die-hard fans.
In creating the large quantity, Disney has also allowed the quality to slip, further eroding the number of people willing to watch the content. This distrust has bled into other Disney franchises as well, and viewers desire fresh IPs rather than rehashed stale ones.
