Why Wish is Disney's next box office disaster

Disney's Wish Author: Disney

Return, dear reader, to the mists of 2019, when it seemed that Disney had cracked the movie business . Depending on your tastes, a decade's supply of the studio's favorite brands (Pixar, Star Wars, and, most notably, Marvel) either saved or destroyed cinema. But the figures it brought in — £10.4 billion at the global box office in 2019 alone from Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel, The Rise of Skywalker. I don't argue with raw business sense.

Well, apparently, now it’s possible. In the past month, Disney has released two films that seem to be the logical conclusion of this strategy: «Wish» this weekend and «Marvels» a few weeks earlier. Both were essentially The Brand: The Movie, summing up everything that audiences adored about each of their franchises. And in both cases, the potential audience overwhelmingly said: actually, no, thank you, we’re great.

«A Wish» was promoted as a celebration of Disney Animation's centennial with its classic «wish upon a star» storyline that combined themes and imagery from 100 years of beloved hand-drawn and CG features. But it took just $19 million in the U.S. over Thanksgiving weekend (traditionally a good time for family moviegoing) and $49 million worldwide.

When the original Frozen musical (another traditional fairytale musical with a modern twist) came out exactly 10 years ago, it brought in three and a half times that amount. Poor Asha and her witty goat pal are even easily beaten by Ridley Scott's Napoleon, which runs an hour longer and received a BBFC rating of 15: no lucrative family outings here.

The disappointment comes on the heels of Marvels, which crashed and burned earlier this month, earning $46.1 million in the US and $110.3 million worldwide: the lowest opening ever for a superhero series in America (and the UK — the third largest) since its inception. in 2008. True, there had been rumors for some time that the film was a «trouble project,» and in the weeks leading up to its release, its director, Nia DaCosta, appeared to be the scapegoat in a series of sneaky briefings for industry insiders. press (she planned her next film during editing, missed the cast and crew screening, etc.).

But from a purely creative standpoint, Marvels seemed like the perfect embodiment of Disney's approach to this particular treasure of intellectual property, from its wacky tone to its outwardly progressive let's-be-on-Twitter spirit and, of course, the intense cross-pollination from other films and show. It was a «this is who we are» mission statement, and the market response was: OK, can we find someone else?

Disney's Big Budget Fail Strange World Posted by Disney

So what's the problem here? Part of it is audience fatigue. Marvel's once-huge audience has burned out, and all that's left is the hardcore ass: fewer, better, cheaper films seem like the smartest way to stem the decline in the field.

But Wish's failure is a more complicated matter. Disney Animation hasn't had a huge box office haul since 2019, when a safe bet on Frozen 2 paid off, grossing nearly $1.5 billion. The studio released the very unconventional sci-fi adventure Strange World by Thanksgiving 2022, but ended up losing $197 million, suggesting that innovation alone isn't the solution here. Indeed, lavish fairytale musicals are something the studio is known to do better than anyone else. What revived their spirit and condition after the depressive state of the 2000s? Two stellar examples of the above are Tangled and The Princess and the Frog.

Animation is still thriving on the theatrical side. Five weeks after release, DreamWorks' Trolls Band Together is approaching $150 million worldwide and £15 million in the UK. (It also cost less than half of what Wish spent to create.)

Wish, unfortunately, isn't very good. However, executives may now nervously wonder whether the problem is the Disney brand itself. More effectively and ruthlessly than any other studio, Disney has trained its fans to associate its products with streaming after pouring so many of its resources into Disney's launch at the start of the pandemic. The service has been filled with a string of high-end Pixar exclusives (Soul, Luca, Red) and a seemingly endless supply of Marvel and Star Wars series. The idea, relentlessly hammered into marketing, is that their products belong in the living room, not the multiplex. And unfortunately for them, their sizable customer base seems to have taken notice.