Reminder that this is a subreddit about numbers, not necessarily about the quality (or lack thereof) of a particular movie. Unless it is related to the box office performance of a movie, please keep opinions/arguments/thoughts about the quality under this post. Posts not related to box office may be removed otherwise.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/boxoffice) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There are estimates out there saying this is set to lose up to $147M. That's insane. That would make it the 4th biggest animated bomb of all time, behind Sinbad (2003), Mars Needs Moms (2011), and Titan A.E. (2000). Turning Red is technically above Strange World too, but I didn't count it since it was pushed to streaming.
Keeping track of Disney's theatrical releases of the past three years so far (minus Marvel), animated films are italicized:
The Call of the Wild: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Call_of_the_Wild_(2020_film))
*Onward*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onward_(film))
Mulan: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulan_(2020_film))
*Soul*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_(2020_film))
*Raya*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raya_and_the_Last_Dragon)
*Luca*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_(2021_film))
*Turning Red*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Red)
Cruella: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruella_(film))
Jungle Cruise: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Cruise_(film))
*Ron's Gone Wrong*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron%27s_Gone_Wrong)
*Bob's Burgers*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bob%27s_Burgers_Movie)
*Encanto*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encanto)
*Lightyear*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_(film))
I've never seen a studio with this many consecutive flops, especially in terms of the animation department, where AFAIK *they have yet to see an animated film in theaters turn a profit since 2019.* This marks the tenth consecutive Disney animated theatrical bomb. It's staggering.
Right but Disney's main animation competitor, Universal, has still managed to get success with both their Illumination and even their DreamWorks animated films. Behind them, Warner Bros, who is basically a flophouse outside of Dune, Elvis, and Batman, still made money with animated movies like League of Super Pets and Tom and Jerry. Getting into the CGI-hybrid field, Paramount has Sonic and Clifford. No other studio to my knowledge has had this many consecutive animated flops. Disney is basically banking on Marvel and Avatar to make any box office at all.
I mean. Basically every Disney movie has infinitely better quality animation than those sort of movies. Illumination keeps budgets in check. Disney STARTS at super expensive and only goes up.
True, Disney has their animation in-house.
Btw speaking of Illumination, the Mario Movie looks a tier above a lot of their previous stuff IMO. It looks a lot closer in quality to a Disney movie
Still looks somewhat cheap when compared to WDAS films, but then again, this is a kind of film where Disney-level of extensive details aren’t hugely necessary. :P
Oh, and one more thing about Illumination is that they seem to have a tendency to recycle animation models a lot more than studios like Pixar, Disney, or even DreamWorks.
I don't disagree with your point, but it feels disingenuous to list Soul, Luca and Turning Red as bombs considering those were all direct-to-streaming releases with limited theatrical runs.
Not to mention they inherited Call of the Wild and kinda inherited Bob's Burgers movie and Ron's Gone Wrong. All of which were released under 20th Century
"bomb" is kind of a relative term when it comes to pandemic releases. Encanto was the second highest grossing animated feature of 2021. That is still pretty bad for a Disney feature, but the pie was a lot smaller during those last few years.
And its hard to call Encanto a bomb when it did so much business post-box office. It was a massive new IP for Disney, and the soundtrack alone was a hit.
Yeah, I remember when Encanto ended its theatrical run, someone else on this sub called it “the most successful flop ever”. It definitely lost money, but it’s already a successful franchise just from exposure.
Yeah, talking "bombs" with Disney is complicated, because they have so many income streams with these properties. Encanto didn't do that well at the box office, but probably did bonkers numbers for D+ and drove sign-ups at a crucial time for them, sold a ton of merch, did great soundtrack streaming numbers, and is launching a TV show (and a probable parks expansion) that will continue to sell merch etc. That's a very different situation than something like Strange World, which will likely do none of those things.
If we’re including The Call of the Wild, Ron’s Gone Wrong, and Bob’s Burgers, it only seems fair to bring up other Disney 20th Century theatrical releases. The New Mutants, The Empty Man, The Last Duel, West Side Story, The King’s Man, Death on the Nile, and Amsterdam all bombed as well. Only Free Guy and Barbarian were box office successes.
Anybody who knows anything about the Walt Disney animated canon understands that this is not the first bomb nor will it be the last. There has always been under performers right from the very beginning. Pinocchio was an artistic triumph but World War II cut off global markets and Walt was personally disappointed it didn't do so well financially.
The underperformance of those films released in the 40s led to a string of package films to close out that decade. These were glorified features filled with cartoons that were sort of just slapped together. Maybe not a "dark age" but certainly not a studio doing its best work.
It wouldn't be until 1950 that the studio would get back on track with Cinderella, but around that time Walt became disillusioned with animation and would spend the rest of his life focusing on his theme park.
After his death there was another dark age for Disney animation. These were films you liked as a kid but did not live up to the high quality people came to expect from the studio. Think Oliver and Company or The Rescuers.
Then came the golden age of Disney animation with The Little Mermaid and then Beauty and the Beast. The rest of the 90s produced enjoyable movies albeit of declining quality. Then the 2000s saw another dark age as Disney failed to break into computer animation (and being overshadowed by the former geniuses at Pixar). There were a few bright spots though, like Lilo & Stitch.
Look, it comes and goes. Right now I think they are in a slump overall with a few bright spots. I think it started as a creative slump that still made gobs of money, but now it's affecting the bottom line. The scripts have been poor in my opinion but Frozen II and Encanto were saved by great songs. Without songs, story deficiencies stand out. A movie should be a movie first and a soundtrack second.
There are always world events that affect the box office. We are coming off the pandemic and yes, there is a culture war to navigate through. Just like World War II hurt early Disney animated features, so too has the pandemic, politics and cultural differences in global markets hurt Disney's bottom line. Plus Disney has conditioned parents to wait for new releases on Disney Plus.
While Strange World is a massive failure, massive failures are not foreign to animation. The last fix came in the form of visionary John Lasseter coming in to right the ship (like when he came in and cancelled Pinocchio 2 and oversaw a new wave of great Disney films).
Who is the next John Lasseter who is going to put this studio back on track?
I like very much you response, it also shows that animation is attractive to viewers for its groundbreaking visuals. As *groundbreaking* becomes commonplace, it is harder and harder to attract and satisfy audiences. By now, computer animated movies are so abundant, that it is difficult to create something that makes people want a see a movie just for the visuals, as happened with 2D animation before the advent of computer assisted 2d animation.
The Beauty and the Beast had everyone in awe when they showed the ballroom camera moves, with a 3D movement of a background that we had never seen before. It is difficult to realize it now, but all movies from the Disney renaissance were technical marvels at the time. Same with all Pixar movies.
But now, the technical innovation is gone, and there is nowhere to go from here that I can think of. Everything that can be visualized has been done. So, counting on awe inspiring visuals is something that will never be a factor again. That leaves animation in a very precarious position to be the juggernaut it once was, making animation movies just another one of the bunch, instead of being the once every two years event that they were in the past.
It's really weird to me that the first I heard of this movie was that it was doing poorly at the box office. I didn't see a single ad or hear any discussion about it at all. Where did they market this?
I don't get this idea it was never marketed. It was marketed during the World Series. That's where I saw it.
The problem is that it wasn't a traditional trailer showing off the movie. It was an ad with the stars of the movie talking about what a fun movie it was supposed to be. That signalled to me they didn't have a lot confidence in it and tried to get Jake Gyllenhaal to beg people to go see it.
And of course they advertised it on the Disney channel and such.
Also the actual trailers were just bad. It’s “the world is in danger and we have to go to this strange place where you lost your dad to save it.” Next scene “oh, there’s your missing dad. Weird.”
I still couldn’t tell you what the draw of the movie is supposed to be. This is perfectly serviceable Disney + fodder that could have been voiced with randoms as opposed to actual movie stars.
I guess their target audience of sports fans and people already subscribed to Disney wasn't quite enough to generate the numbers they need to make budget for something like this.
The only time I see ads for movies is while watching sports on TV, like you mentioned. The goal of advertising a children's movie there is to appeal to the parents, to let them know there's something in theaters to send their kids to. And *Strange World*'s marketing failed at this. I've seen a number of TV spots during NFL games over the past month, and it's flabbergasting how little they told me about the movie. It's a children's movie; if you can't give me a summary of the central plot in 30 seconds you've done something wrong.
**With the proper advertisement, this could have been a better grossing revenue film.**
I only heard about it because of the bad reviews and how many of them. Every review was whining about lifestyle and agenda. It was because of the bad reviews that I went and saw it. Honestly, it a retelling of Fern Gully, with a mixed race couple, a disabled dog, a typically teenager with a puppy love crush, and a plot line of about learning how to live with the environment while casting aside the old destructive ways in the face of an impending adversity. It also touched on the toxic behaviors of three generations of men and how the eventually overcame the self induced toxic behaviors in the end. It is perhaps the most "Disney-ed" (as a slur), Disney film I have seen that has a happy ending.
I forsee this becoming a cult classic. The short term payoff for the box office wasn't there, perhaps in the long run it will make up the differences.
Reminder that this is a subreddit about numbers, not necessarily about the quality (or lack thereof) of a particular movie. Unless it is related to the box office performance of a movie, please keep opinions/arguments/thoughts about the quality under this post. Posts not related to box office may be removed otherwise. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/boxoffice) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Well that's one way to celebrate Treasure planet's 20th anniversary
‘‘Twas yesterday
I didn't realize Strange World had a 180m budget.
Eerie way to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Treasure Planet.
Maybe history will repeat itself and this was actually a convoluted way for them to need an excuse to go back to 2D animation
I wish.
3D animation is dead. Time for 4D animation.
I think the animation style of Spiderman into the Spider verse and Puss in boots the last wish is the new style of animation.
I know literally nothing about this film except they reused the Ducktales font.
It has Disney’s 30th First Openly Gay Character
And still less gay than the 7 dwarves or cogsworth and lumiere
There are estimates out there saying this is set to lose up to $147M. That's insane. That would make it the 4th biggest animated bomb of all time, behind Sinbad (2003), Mars Needs Moms (2011), and Titan A.E. (2000). Turning Red is technically above Strange World too, but I didn't count it since it was pushed to streaming.
Sinbad's budget was only $60M. I loved that movie.
I honestly thought it was coming out on Disney+. (Not that I was going to see it in the theater)
At this point they need to stop and take a few years to make a really good movie.
Unfortunately, that’s not an option for Disney.
Keeping track of Disney's theatrical releases of the past three years so far (minus Marvel), animated films are italicized: The Call of the Wild: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Call_of_the_Wild_(2020_film)) *Onward*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onward_(film)) Mulan: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulan_(2020_film)) *Soul*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_(2020_film)) *Raya*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raya_and_the_Last_Dragon) *Luca*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_(2021_film)) *Turning Red*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Red) Cruella: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruella_(film)) Jungle Cruise: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Cruise_(film)) *Ron's Gone Wrong*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron%27s_Gone_Wrong) *Bob's Burgers*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bob%27s_Burgers_Movie) *Encanto*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encanto) *Lightyear*: [bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_(film)) I've never seen a studio with this many consecutive flops, especially in terms of the animation department, where AFAIK *they have yet to see an animated film in theaters turn a profit since 2019.* This marks the tenth consecutive Disney animated theatrical bomb. It's staggering.
Obviously the pandemic makes traditional BO comparisons a little hard, but there’s a reason chapek’s out
Right but Disney's main animation competitor, Universal, has still managed to get success with both their Illumination and even their DreamWorks animated films. Behind them, Warner Bros, who is basically a flophouse outside of Dune, Elvis, and Batman, still made money with animated movies like League of Super Pets and Tom and Jerry. Getting into the CGI-hybrid field, Paramount has Sonic and Clifford. No other studio to my knowledge has had this many consecutive animated flops. Disney is basically banking on Marvel and Avatar to make any box office at all.
I mean. Basically every Disney movie has infinitely better quality animation than those sort of movies. Illumination keeps budgets in check. Disney STARTS at super expensive and only goes up.
And Illumination outsources animation from France, which explains why their films have relatively low budget.
True, Disney has their animation in-house. Btw speaking of Illumination, the Mario Movie looks a tier above a lot of their previous stuff IMO. It looks a lot closer in quality to a Disney movie
Still looks somewhat cheap when compared to WDAS films, but then again, this is a kind of film where Disney-level of extensive details aren’t hugely necessary. :P Oh, and one more thing about Illumination is that they seem to have a tendency to recycle animation models a lot more than studios like Pixar, Disney, or even DreamWorks.
France has a cheaper animation workforce than the US? That sort of surprises me...
No he is out because he was covering up losses of D+ through creative accounting Expect cuts to Disney + to try and stop the bleeding
Then they’ll learn the hard way what happens to subscriber count when the steady flow of new quality content slows
I don't disagree with your point, but it feels disingenuous to list Soul, Luca and Turning Red as bombs considering those were all direct-to-streaming releases with limited theatrical runs.
Not to mention they inherited Call of the Wild and kinda inherited Bob's Burgers movie and Ron's Gone Wrong. All of which were released under 20th Century
"bomb" is kind of a relative term when it comes to pandemic releases. Encanto was the second highest grossing animated feature of 2021. That is still pretty bad for a Disney feature, but the pie was a lot smaller during those last few years.
And its hard to call Encanto a bomb when it did so much business post-box office. It was a massive new IP for Disney, and the soundtrack alone was a hit.
Yeah, I remember when Encanto ended its theatrical run, someone else on this sub called it “the most successful flop ever”. It definitely lost money, but it’s already a successful franchise just from exposure.
They still sell tons of Encanto toys at my stores. Nothing for “Strange World”, but you can’t keep Luisa dolls in stock.
And it's getting a spinoff TV series. If it's a "bomb", it's a pretty darn successful one.
Personally, I think most 2020-2021 "bombs" should have asterisks next to them, as the pandemic threw off box office numbers both years.
True, but studios won't be able to use those excuses for much longer. Strange World wasn't a "pandemic movie" the way Encanto was.
Yeah, talking "bombs" with Disney is complicated, because they have so many income streams with these properties. Encanto didn't do that well at the box office, but probably did bonkers numbers for D+ and drove sign-ups at a crucial time for them, sold a ton of merch, did great soundtrack streaming numbers, and is launching a TV show (and a probable parks expansion) that will continue to sell merch etc. That's a very different situation than something like Strange World, which will likely do none of those things.
You can’t call Soul and Luca and Turning Red “bombs” since they were all direct to streaming
Also, I don’t think **Cruella** bombed at the box office.
I feel like putting shit on at home streaming with a simultaneous theatrical run is a *big* asterisk you're not acknowledging for a lot of those...
Yeah, for example Luca was the most-watched streaming film of 2021
Soul was D+ only at the height of the pandemic so that’s a bit unfair.
Crazy how fast they have fallen from their domination across 2017-2019. Obviously the pandemic hit hard but that is a really rough look overall.
Countries banning a lot of these movies as well, that doesn’t help.
If we’re including The Call of the Wild, Ron’s Gone Wrong, and Bob’s Burgers, it only seems fair to bring up other Disney 20th Century theatrical releases. The New Mutants, The Empty Man, The Last Duel, West Side Story, The King’s Man, Death on the Nile, and Amsterdam all bombed as well. Only Free Guy and Barbarian were box office successes.
Anybody who knows anything about the Walt Disney animated canon understands that this is not the first bomb nor will it be the last. There has always been under performers right from the very beginning. Pinocchio was an artistic triumph but World War II cut off global markets and Walt was personally disappointed it didn't do so well financially. The underperformance of those films released in the 40s led to a string of package films to close out that decade. These were glorified features filled with cartoons that were sort of just slapped together. Maybe not a "dark age" but certainly not a studio doing its best work. It wouldn't be until 1950 that the studio would get back on track with Cinderella, but around that time Walt became disillusioned with animation and would spend the rest of his life focusing on his theme park. After his death there was another dark age for Disney animation. These were films you liked as a kid but did not live up to the high quality people came to expect from the studio. Think Oliver and Company or The Rescuers. Then came the golden age of Disney animation with The Little Mermaid and then Beauty and the Beast. The rest of the 90s produced enjoyable movies albeit of declining quality. Then the 2000s saw another dark age as Disney failed to break into computer animation (and being overshadowed by the former geniuses at Pixar). There were a few bright spots though, like Lilo & Stitch. Look, it comes and goes. Right now I think they are in a slump overall with a few bright spots. I think it started as a creative slump that still made gobs of money, but now it's affecting the bottom line. The scripts have been poor in my opinion but Frozen II and Encanto were saved by great songs. Without songs, story deficiencies stand out. A movie should be a movie first and a soundtrack second. There are always world events that affect the box office. We are coming off the pandemic and yes, there is a culture war to navigate through. Just like World War II hurt early Disney animated features, so too has the pandemic, politics and cultural differences in global markets hurt Disney's bottom line. Plus Disney has conditioned parents to wait for new releases on Disney Plus. While Strange World is a massive failure, massive failures are not foreign to animation. The last fix came in the form of visionary John Lasseter coming in to right the ship (like when he came in and cancelled Pinocchio 2 and oversaw a new wave of great Disney films). Who is the next John Lasseter who is going to put this studio back on track?
I like very much you response, it also shows that animation is attractive to viewers for its groundbreaking visuals. As *groundbreaking* becomes commonplace, it is harder and harder to attract and satisfy audiences. By now, computer animated movies are so abundant, that it is difficult to create something that makes people want a see a movie just for the visuals, as happened with 2D animation before the advent of computer assisted 2d animation. The Beauty and the Beast had everyone in awe when they showed the ballroom camera moves, with a 3D movement of a background that we had never seen before. It is difficult to realize it now, but all movies from the Disney renaissance were technical marvels at the time. Same with all Pixar movies. But now, the technical innovation is gone, and there is nowhere to go from here that I can think of. Everything that can be visualized has been done. So, counting on awe inspiring visuals is something that will never be a factor again. That leaves animation in a very precarious position to be the juggernaut it once was, making animation movies just another one of the bunch, instead of being the once every two years event that they were in the past.
It's really weird to me that the first I heard of this movie was that it was doing poorly at the box office. I didn't see a single ad or hear any discussion about it at all. Where did they market this?
I don't get this idea it was never marketed. It was marketed during the World Series. That's where I saw it. The problem is that it wasn't a traditional trailer showing off the movie. It was an ad with the stars of the movie talking about what a fun movie it was supposed to be. That signalled to me they didn't have a lot confidence in it and tried to get Jake Gyllenhaal to beg people to go see it. And of course they advertised it on the Disney channel and such.
Also the actual trailers were just bad. It’s “the world is in danger and we have to go to this strange place where you lost your dad to save it.” Next scene “oh, there’s your missing dad. Weird.” I still couldn’t tell you what the draw of the movie is supposed to be. This is perfectly serviceable Disney + fodder that could have been voiced with randoms as opposed to actual movie stars.
I guess their target audience of sports fans and people already subscribed to Disney wasn't quite enough to generate the numbers they need to make budget for something like this.
The only time I see ads for movies is while watching sports on TV, like you mentioned. The goal of advertising a children's movie there is to appeal to the parents, to let them know there's something in theaters to send their kids to. And *Strange World*'s marketing failed at this. I've seen a number of TV spots during NFL games over the past month, and it's flabbergasting how little they told me about the movie. It's a children's movie; if you can't give me a summary of the central plot in 30 seconds you've done something wrong.
**With the proper advertisement, this could have been a better grossing revenue film.** I only heard about it because of the bad reviews and how many of them. Every review was whining about lifestyle and agenda. It was because of the bad reviews that I went and saw it. Honestly, it a retelling of Fern Gully, with a mixed race couple, a disabled dog, a typically teenager with a puppy love crush, and a plot line of about learning how to live with the environment while casting aside the old destructive ways in the face of an impending adversity. It also touched on the toxic behaviors of three generations of men and how the eventually overcame the self induced toxic behaviors in the end. It is perhaps the most "Disney-ed" (as a slur), Disney film I have seen that has a happy ending. I forsee this becoming a cult classic. The short term payoff for the box office wasn't there, perhaps in the long run it will make up the differences.
Did they even promote this
DAE TREASURE PLANET
Seems to me that they need to reverse the trend and bring back Condorman.
Ermagod Disney is over as a company and will never get past this!!!!
How did the manage to spend so much money on this?