To infinity and beyond… or to losses and falling below projections?
Late on Friday, trade publications began to softly adjust their Lightyear projections. No, the movie will not be making the $90 million we were looking at a week ago. No, the movie will likely not be making the $75 million we were told it had two days ago. Now we’re down to a potential $55-60 million opening weekend and even the possibility of coming in second to Jurassic World Dominion with its sophomore outing. But this isn’t the fully story of how far Lightyear has fallen and how badly the press missed this one. The degree to which they were wrong about Lightyear is about the difference of saying you’re going to Aspen for a ski vacation but you somehow wind up in Miami. In other words, the mainstream and access media have been so wrong on this that it indicates they have no idea what they’re talking about when they assess society and the market at large. That’s what happens when you live and chat inside a bubble.
So where were we just three weeks ago?
The Chris Evans-led movie also has very little competition at the box office for its opening weekend, which suggests its debut will be massively successful. Lightyear is the only major film being released on June 17, with its significant competition coming from second-weekend viewings of Jurassic World Dominion‘s reportedly franchise-ending movie or the adult-oriented films Elvis and The Black Phone on June 24. However, these features shouldn’t be enough to keep audiences away from seeing Lightyear during its opening weekend. As such, Lightyear is in a very comfortable position to reach its $1 billion box office estimates.
— Jordan Williams, Screen Rant
A billion dollars. A billion dollars. That’s what they thought Lightyear was going to pull in for its theatrical run. Now we’re at the opening weekend and what do we have? The movie will be lucky to hit $120 million worldwide and even if it has unbelievable legs at theaters, its best case scenario is half-a-billion. That would still be a loss for Disney, by the way. The move was $200 million to produce, likely more than $100 million to market, and Disney only gets around half the revenue generated by ticket sales after taxes and movie theaters getting their cut.
Now we’ve been saying for a long time at this point that Lightyear would be the first movie that really shows us if there’s a Disney backlash. We’ve seen it in multiple polls and it has been dramatic. But until now, we hadn’t seen it manifest in a financially clear way. That’s what box office tallies will do though. There’s no hiding this behind cleverly worded press releases like they did with Kenobi. This is out in the open and it’s bad.
The question becomes, will Lightyear be the first example of the alleged Disney Backlash starting to have a real impact? And if that doesn’t occur, will this be proof positive that there is no real oomph to the backlash attempts from people like Christopher Rufo?
I guess we’re all about to find out.
— Manu Lopez (May 13th), That Park Place
Well, despite us having called this for months and explained to our readers how all of this was likely to go down, this is all brand-new for the major publications out there. That means that it is damage control time. Damage control requires excuses. If we hop on over to Indie Wire with Tom Brueggemann, there are excuses aplenty, but none of them talk about Disney’s poll numbers crashing, Doctor Strange having a huge drop after its first weekend, the fact that a lesbian couple gets pregnant in Lightyear (leading kids to inevitably ask hard questions to parents who just wanted to see a cute Buzz Lightyear flick), etc. Instead, we get the usual blather. “It has tough competition.” “Animated movies are down.” “Marketing is not doing well.” Yadda yadda yadda. There won’t be an explanation when Rise of Gru comes out for why it is able to do well in spite of all this… they’ll just move onto the next corporate talking point.
Beyond the talk about fake excuses, there was one thing that caught my eye. Even the people who chose to go see the movie, who would be predisposed to liking the film (because you’d almost have to know about the cultural issues surrounding the property at this point), those first movie-goers are not impressed by the film:
In last night’s PostTrak exits, Lightyear notched four stars with overall audiences and a 62% recommend. The audience make-up was 67% general, 16% parents and 17% kids under 12. Parents gave the movie 4 1/2 stars whereas kids under 12 gave it 5 stars. Boys outnumbered girls, 61% to 39%. Of the general audience, 53% where men, 47% women.
— Anthony D’Alessandro, Deadline
In comparison, Top Gun: Maverick had a PosTrak score that was closer to 90%. If your most ardent fans are only willing to recommend the movie at a 62% rate, that’s pretty darn poor. D’Alessandro tries to obscure that a bit by then talking about 23% of the demographics that were polled and what they thought, but the general numbers are what they are. There’s no getting around it. We can pretend to know why barely over half of the audience most interested in the movie would suggest others go see it, but it really isn’t as important as the clear fact that word-of-mouth will be very poor.
All of this adds up to a future where there is going to be a counter backlash against consumers who chose not to see the film. It’s hard for bruised media egos to not lash out. Even the wokesters at Disney may lash out. It will not work, however. This is the pendulum shifting. This is a strong indicator that the market is tired of what is happening with Hollywood. Top Gun: Maverick is the winning recipe. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is the winning recipe. Spider-Man No Way Home is the winning recipe. They make money. They make profits. Losses obviously don’t. And this is one Space Ranger strongly on the path to a forfeiture of funds by Disney.
The market is speaking loudly. The culture is shifting.
For all the news that should be fun, keep reading That Park Place! As always, drop a comment down below and let us know your thoughts!
If Chapek wants to turn this around, he has a lot of work ahead of him. It takes years to change a company’s culture and that mission isn’t always successful if the employees resist.
why do u always bring up ds2 second drop off but ignore nwh which also had big drop off in its second weekend. Maverick held even better than that. Also doctor strange 2 has held well in its weekends after weekend 2 amds its already made around 900 million which is great for a doctor strange film amd its bette than the first film but u dodnt want to bring ip cause it doesnt conform to your narrative its cringe how u try to be objective but are just a partisan hack ad the mainstream media u criticise.
Because NwH stabalized thereafter, PLUS its second weekend featured days traditionally difficult for any movie to perform well. Look at the difference in the box office tallies versus the starting weekends. One fell off, one held strong.
DS2 did fall off, yet it did make a profit. [per The Numbers, Production Budget: $200,000,000 (worldwide box office is 4.7 times production budget) – 3 times is needed for profit]
There are flashing yellow/caution alerts for Disney/Marvel because its Cinemascore is a B+, and it did not gross a billion+, which they should look into all the factors for that – on the other hand, it’s not flashing red because it did make a profit. It’s a success and disappointment all at once for them.
just because it didnt make a billion doesnt make it a dissapointment not every marvel movie makes a billion its made more than its first film by alot it making a billion would have just been a bonus.
Fair, indeed, because it did make a profit, a billion+ is bonus. Excellent point.
On the other hand, the B+ Cinemascore remains a form of disappointing/concern; therefore Disney/Marvel should explore as to why that happened for feedback (it influences how they should properly frame stories/narratives, what tropes and archetypes to avoid, or be more careful about) in the future.
The thing Marvel IS concerned about would be that Doctor Strange 2 opened with awesome numbers because fans flocked to it from Spider-Man… a Sony production. But the B+ score you cite places DS2 as the third least-liked Marvel movie of all time. Thus the drop and thus why it didn’t reach Spider-Man numbers or even close. It could have but it did not.
Even if ds2 was universally beloved i dont think it would have reached nwh numbers because nwh was an event with the 2 spider-man and old villians coming back. It may be would have done black panther numbers even without china. Also marvel made nwh but sony distributed it.
Doctor strange 2 also stabilized after its second weekend
You can say that, but both opened with awesome numbers. One ended as one of the most successful movies of all time, the other ended as a solid blockbuster… but nowhere close to the top.
Well one was a crossover/ event movie which you expect to be very successful like the avengers films while was just a story about one character the latter being a solid blockbuster is great
I mean even if projections were not the best with the movie it doesn’t seem like the movie is as hated as people theorized beforehand.
When half the audience you expected doesn’t show up and only 67% of the half willing to do so are also willing to recommend the movie… not good.
I expected that number to be worse.
You may be right very soon.
It crashed worldwide, so it’s beyond the culture war. In North America, it received an A- Cinemascore, so it’s enjoyed by the general audience that sees it.
Reasons to consider why people did not see it – I know of those on the left that declined seeing it because of anger that other Pixar films with diversity leads went to Disney+ without theatrical. For GA that refused to see it, this may include the confusing marketing (i.e. the movie Andy saw was not clarified), and people feel the Toy Story narrative/journey is complete.
Will be interesting to observe legs/second weekend.
Curious if legal requirements (paperwork/contract) with Chris Evans is why Lightyear went theatrical. instead of direct Disney+ release. (if Disney was aware it would/crash underperform but could not avoid this scenario, and fascinating enough, this does not bother Chapek et al because of long-term plans).
PS The Axios Harris Poll is a progressive poll (#1 is Trader Joe’s, and then compare that to who is in last place). Disney fell in their eyes most likely because of what happened in March/April. Nevertheless, Disney should ignore everyone except for the Moderates (with a smidgen of overlap to moderate/conservative and moderate/liberal).
People did not see it because the heart and soul of Toy Story is Woody. Buzz has been playing a smaller and smaller role since the first movie because he’s a boring character and there’s not much else that can be said about him. Without the Toy Story star power you are struck with the age old problem that sci-fi animation don’t perform that well in the box office cause it appeals mostly to geeks rather than to little kids and the general audience. So from the moment the spinoff was greenlit it was already doomed to fail.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been looking at the local theater where you can choose your own seat. No showing on Saturday or Sunday has sold more than half of the seats, regardless of screen size and number of seats. The part of town I live is very dense and has a lot of families so this is somewhat surprising.