“Strange World,” Disney’s latest movie, has flopped so catastrophically at the box office that it is on course to lose $100 million, if not more, and some are asking if management intended it that way from the start.
“Strange World” underperformed even projected numbers that had previously been revised downward – and did so dramatically.
Initial projections indicated that Disney expected to earn $30-40 million over the long Thanksgiving holiday, which would not have been a huge opening but would have been significantly higher than the $11.9 million earned over the weekend — or the $18.9 million earned over the five-day holiday break.
These figures place Disney’s latest offering among the worst opening weekends in modern history. For example, the 2021 musical “Encanto” grossed more than $27 million over the weekend and $40 million during the long Thanksgiving holiday.
“Strange World” is plunging into is just going to become deeper.
“Normally this time of year, a Disney family film is the big draw,” Paul Dergarabedian, a senior Comscore analyst, explained. “It shows we’re still recovering and adapting to the constraints of the pandemic.”
But, whether people are still sluggish to come out in the numbers that they could have had pre-pandemic, as Dergarabedian noted, or just were not interested in this specific offering, the ultimate effect is the same: people aren’t rushing to watch “Strange World.”
Based on the dearth of hype around the film’s premiere and reviews that are unlikely to draw in additional people, Variety predicts that “Strange World” will fall far short of the $360 million Disney needs to break even.
And, given the film’s low box office performance thus far, others suspect that executives anticipated it to fail.
“Saw Strange World and I’ll be damned, Disney Animation actually had a character that wasn’t just lip service for online articles but now I wonder if that is the reason for the weak marketing/merch for this film,” @Saberspark tweeted. “My theory: the execs want this film to go under the radar.”
Several of the comments responding to @saberspark made similar suggestions, observing that few trailers for “Strange World” had made it into other releases and questioning whether this film’s lackluster performance — along with pre-release backlash over an overtly gay teen character and the relatively poor showing made by Pixar’s “Lightyear” — might be used as an excuse to move away from LGBTQ themes in future content.