There are a number of dangers for Disney coming from DC’s late-summer animated flick in terms of a narrative that doesn’t favor Mickey’s brand.
Talk about a headline I never thought I’d write just six months ago…
DC’s League of Super-Pet’s is coming out this weekend, a very late summer debut, at a time which is generally regarded as the graveyard of this season’s movie slate. It’s really the last weekend before many kids go back to school and then usually we don’t see any big movies from now through September. People are going to be busy with school returning, football season, etc. Then, in October, things begin to pick back up again just before the holiday movie rush begins again.
That awkward moment when an animation was way more enjoyable than live-action movies 🤣
DC League of Super-pets>>>DCEU pic.twitter.com/kc1X9pu2aL
— #ZHAFVLOG (@zhafvlog) July 26, 2022
But DC’s animated entry is actually getting decent reviews (not great, but decent) and there’s almost no competition for the movie going forward. Now, Box Office Pro is predicting that the Super Pets are heading for a $31,000,000 domestic opening. And if you can believe it, that has people at Disney… specifically at Pixar… sweating a little bit. Here’s why:
At $31 million for its opening, and the possibility of decent drops each weekend thereafter, DC’s Super Pets has a legitimate shot at surpassing Pixar’s Lightyear with a $117,504,023 domestic total haul. That’s not the only way this could wind up being more than a major embarrassment for Pixar and Disney. Lightyear opened on one of the best weekends in the year. Super Pets is opening on one of the worst. Lightyear had a $200 million production budget. Super Pets has less than half. And then to top all of that off, if Super Pets overperforms and does well for a third-string animated flick at the end of summer, it’s going to make it awfully hard for Disney to use scheduling as a reason to explain away The Marvels potentially flopping at the end of next summer.
Ouch, ouch and ouch.
So when people claim that I’m defending Bob Chapek by saying that Disney is going to course correct, it’s not that I’m claiming that the current CEO of Disney is the savior of the company. Instead, I’m just looking at simple math (in addition to listening to sources inside and around the company). Disney’s shareholders are not going to permit the company to be in a situation where Toy Story is getting beat by Super Pets. They’re just not. Even if you think that there are saboteurs inside the shareholders who want the company to further ingratiate itself with politics and China, there’s still no way that all of Disney’s investors are going to throw their money away as the company sputters into a financial ditch. The studios that are currently flopping over and over (Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel) are supposed to be driving customers to the more lucrative sectors inside the company. There’s no way that this will continue in the direction without a course correction brought about by the market.
But that’s where Disney is at right now. Kenobi was beaten in the ratings by “The Man From Toronto,” Ms. Marvel never made it into the top ten streaming shows, and Lightyear may get a beat-down by DC in a sub-prime release window.
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