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.
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