THB #561: Original Animation By The Numbers, Pt. 2 (When Bob II Met Failure)
Pixar’s Soul was the first sacrificial lamb in animation, released to Disney+ in December 2020.
In March 2021, Disney Animation’s Raya & The Last Dragon was released in theaters and on Disney+ as a Premier Access Pay Per View…. a terrible idea. The film still opened to $8 million and topped out at $55 million domestic and $76 million internationally in a limited movie theater market.
Team Chapek pushed back into the live-action theatrical business in May 2021 with Cruella and the double-dip of Black Widow and Jungle Cruise in July. In the meanwhile, in June, Pixar’s 2nd straight release, Luca, was not made a part of that push and was dumped exclusively onto Disney+.
Disney started pushing out Fox product that August with Free Guy, a movie that was built to be a huge commercial hit, but couldn’t get past $122 million domestic.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was the most positive sign about the return of theatrical in entire industry, in September 2021, scoring $225 million domestic.
Ocrober brought 2 more Fox titles, one animated - Ron’s Gone Wrong - and one live-action, The Last Duel. Both were duds.
October brought signs of life to the theatrical marketplace with Bond, Venom 2, Halloween Kills (aka #12), and Dune.
This set up what seemed like it might be a very successful November, as Disney returned to releasing Disney titles. The Eternals from Marvel landed between Bond and Venom… and well behind Shang-Chi domestically, though it was a little stronger internationally.
Also in November, the movie I still consider the biggest mismanaged title in modern Disney history. Encanto. I argued that the film was being undersold before it opened, a reality that was multiplied when I actually saw the film. A solid corporate publicity department and a pliant media still carries the water that the movie was finally discovered on Disney+… as though this was a win. But the musical was a monster soundtrack hit on the level of Frozen (arguably bigger) with its songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda that would make it a worldwide #1 album with multiple worldwide Top Ten singles. The directing team of Byron Howard and Jared Bush were involved with unexpected original smashes at Disney, including the billion dollar Zootopia as writer/directors and Howard as a co-director of Tangled, and Bush as a writer on Moana.
So… of course the thing to do is to not promote the songs early… not to embrace the female lead of the film… not to lean hard into the international flavor of the film… not to plan for a film that would play for months.
The film opened a day before Thanksgiving, with Disney already suggesting that a Christmas release on Disney+ was coming. It did $41 million over the 5 day weekend. It dropped in the very soft first weekend of December, but then held 75% and 65% of its gross in the next 2 weekend.
And then it was dead domestically… a Disney+ movie… dropping 72% instantly.
It should have opened better and with a better, more ambitious campaign - not even the phenom music campaign - it would have. But Disney cursed the film with the Christmas move to streaming. Meanwhile, the songs sold themselves across the globe in spite of Disney’s half-hearted effort.
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