THB #719: When Bombs Fall...
This is not the column you might think it is from that headline.
It’s about Elio… mostly.
We have had our share of bad studio openings this year. The Alto Knights ($3.2 million opening) sits on the ocean floor and is followed by Love Hurts, Drop, Heart Eyes, Novocaine, Companion, and The Woman in the Yard as sub-$10 million major studio releases this year. But of that group, it appears that only The Alto Knights, a vanity greenlit by the endlessly chased-by-villagers David Zaslav, cost more than $20 million to produce. (The “reported” coincidence that Love Hurts, Heart Eyes, and Novocaine all allegedly cost $18 million is beyond credulity, but I will put that aside here.)
These are not the bombs you are looking for. (This group is more deeply examined here.)
The next tier are higher budget releases that opened to less than $20 million. Mickey 17, Paddington in Peru, The Amateur, and Karate Kids: Legends.
We can skip discussing Paddington 3, as it was expected to and did much better internationally than domestically… and was soft sold (lower spends) by Sony… and will make money when all is said and done. That said, it cost more than the first 2 movies while being directed by a different director in a franchise that was, the first 2 times, extremely dependent on the vision of Paul King (who was busy making Wonka, which nearly doubled any film he had previously made).
The 2 originals on this sad list are quite different. Mickey 17 is from an Oscar-winning worldwide phenom director in Bong Joon Ho… but on the business side, one must note that Parasite was his only film to gross more than $90 million worldwide before, yes, Mickey 17. But Mickey was also Director Bong’s first major studio release. His best film, Memories of Me, was barely distributed in the U.S. and you can now pay for it or watch it with commercials on Tubi (so fucked). The Host, his third biggest hit, was released by Magnolia and did just $2.2 million of its $89 million domestically… which was great for Magnolia. Snowpiercer ($4.6 million domestic) was released by Radius-TWC, which was the more home-entertainment leaning division of Weinstein and was, essentially, the precursor of Neon, which has found a different model. And Okja got a ton of attention… on Netflix.
So Bong’s first Major American Studio release, Mickey 17, was set up in the wake of Parasite by the previous regime at WB and given the final greenlight just before production by the current DeAbdy… AbLuca… PMS (Pam, Mike, and leave the S off for Savings!)… regime at Warners.
The saga of how Mickey 17 was ultimately released is complicated and debated, but I will leave it at the fact that production ended in December 2022 and the movie was released in February 2025… and the internal hum at Warners was that the film was a writedown waiting to happen. Ironically, this is where filmmakers should love the idea of working for Pamela and Mike-ela… because they went forward with selling the shit out of the movie. Unsuccessfully. But they didn’t shun the title and dump it without fanfare as many studios do when they have a presumed stinker (see: The Alto Knights). It wasn’t an easy birth, but it was birthed like a real major studio movie.
The other original was The Amateur, which was a 20th Century project within Disney. The studio that ate Fox has dumped a lot of movies in the first years of the merger, but that is no longer a norm. And the gave the Amateur the ol’ college try. But the producers hired a TV director with just one feature under his belt and gave the overwhelmingly dominant lead of the film to Rami Malek, who is a TV star with one movie that he can get any credit for opening - Bohemian Rhapsody - though with due respect to his Oscar-winning turn as Freddie Mercury, Freddy and Queen opened and delivered big money to that movie with the support of a great performance by Malek, who didn’t fuck it up.
I am thrilled that the studio business has opened itself up to more first-time major studio directors in recent years compared to the past. I can’t find the Excel sheet, but I did an analysis in 2019 of how many new directors got to make movies at major studios each year and the answer was 2 - 4 a year… every other hire had already made a major studio movie. I quickly count more than a dozen first timers doing major studio films last year (2024) and that is leaving out well-established indie filmmakers/teams like Barry Jenkins, J.C. Chandor, and Mike Mitchell who did their first films for majors long into successful careers.
Is this massive change a sign of inclusion, being able to control (real or imagined) less experienced directors, just because all of these directors did something impressive and can be pushed into The Majors cheap compared to the same old, same old or something else altogether. I don’t have an answer. Each one is a long story, obviously.
The 2024 Major First-Timer List…
Blitz Bazawule
Lee Isaac Chung
S.J. Clarkson
Spenser Cohen | Anna Halberg
David G. Derrick Jr. | Jason Hand | Dana Ledoux Miller
Samantha Jayne | Arturo Perez Jr.
Bryce McGuire
Dev Patel
Benjamin Renner | Guylo Homsy
Michael Sarnoski
Ishana Shyamalan
Arkasha Stevenson
James Watkins
Lots of women… lots of people of color… great.. truly.
But there is a price to inexperience - which is the reason why the studio gates have been so high for so long - and there are balances that need to be found within studios to figure that out when they greenlight these movies.
So back to The Amateur. I have a similar take on that film as I have on most of the 6 titles that opened under $10 million this year. Keep those budgets tight… but pick at least one place where you have some serious experience, in front of the camera or in that director’s chair. In the case of The Amateur, when you know that the screenplay is going to lean so heavily on the star - an underdog who overcomes his own limitations against all odds - you need someone who can sell your movie.
The comp that jumps to mind is The Accountant… the first one. Gavin O’Connor was a director on the rise - great with actors - who recovered from the mess of Jane Got A Gun with this film. Warner Bros. produced and distributed. And they paid for Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, JK Simmons, Jon Bernthal, and John Lithgow, plus Jean Smart and the then-very-employable Jeffrey Tambor. Affleck was not and is not a huge opener… but he is an opener. And there was a long list of very familiar faces right behind him.
The Amateur added to Malek, Laurence Fishburne and Rachel “Mrs. Maisel… soon to be Lois Lane” Brosnahan, and Jon Bernthal. All terrific actors. But do they help open this movie? And this is with a budget about 30% higher than The Accountant.
I don’t mean to be sniffing around dirty laundry too much because I am just spitballing from outside the lot. The are surely what were felt to be good reasons for these specific choices. But I am using them as examples that seem to show the problem between a $15 million opening and a $25 million opening… which led to $41 million vs $86 million domestic totals.
And then there is Karate Kids: Legends.
Another first-time Major Studio director in Jonathan Entwistle… who is a tv director who is a first-time any-kind-of-feature director as well. But as the backstop, you have a very well-established piece of IP…. perhaps too well established.
I wrote a review of this movie and acknowledged repeatedly that I don’t know what actually happened on this movie, which seemed to have Joshua Jackson as the American teacher of the kid who does karate with some back-up from Jackie Chan, who stays in China and maybe showed up in the 3rd act. it is my belief, from watching the film carefully, that more Chan and the addition of Ralph Macchio came late in the process, if not during production. They are remarkably separate from the bulk of the film.
The point is, I think they went in with one idea and decided they had a problem and the fix seems to have made things worse commercially, not better. The movie’s box office is not a complete disaster… but it’s not a hit either. Interestingly, it is still the #14 biggest opening of the year domestically.
#13? Elio, assuming projections for this weekend hold.
Elio is a very unique animal in this box office zoo. The opening sucks. There is no way to argue your way out of this. But even with an opening about half of that of Snow White, Elio has a much better shot at being breakeven… or even profitable.
The media has a short memory for their missteps… like 2 whole summers ago when it wrote off Elemental when it opened to $29.6 million.
The movie ended up doing just under $500 million worldwide at the box office and did well for Disney+ and is now looking at a sequel.
Elio, allegedly, cost $50 million less to produce. And according to the nearly romantic relationship between CinemaScore and Anthony D'Alessandro, the film has an “A overall CinemaScore and A+ for the under 25 bunch.”
He also adds, absurdly, “the new paradigm of success for a Disney animated property lies in its endgame viewership on Disney+.” That’s just bullshit. The Disney paradigm for all of their films is to have success in every window, period, end of story.
But Pamela McClintock was a bit more circumspect this time… maybe a hangover from Sinners…
Anthony remains on some kind of weird gummy experience…
“What’s the solution for Pixar? Better development meetings, duh. You can’t tell me that the old glory opening B.O. days of Pixar can’t be recaptured”
Seriously. You cover box office. We know the big box office openers for Pixar can happen because there is no reason why they cannot and their sequels still do massive business. But “better development meetings?” WTF, man?
“It’s easier said than done to pull off a Pixar hit; a delicate balance between simplicity, adult heartfelt sophistication, hysterical humor, relatable characters, awestruck animation and let’s not forget cinema homages”
Wow. When I wrote about Elio on Thursday, I was not nearly as artsy-fartsy. I did, however, point out that the history of Pixar is a series of original stories from a perspective that humans do not and cannot have. From the inner world of toys to bugs to monsters to cars t0 fish to superheroes to a rat to trash robots to the inside of a maturing brain to death in Coco. Up was really the first Pixar film to break the core intended-or-unintended driver and it found magic. (I still kinda believe that Up is about Carl’s death fantasy… but Pete Docter says, “no,” and he is too nice to argue with.) Brave, the next one, not so much… one of the director’s changed films. The Good Dinosaur was a little both ways and flopped.
It’s almost like COVID knew something, as Onward came out just a COVID hit. Then Bob II treated both Pixar and Disney Animation like a millstone around his neck, undermining Soul, Luca, and Turning Red before trying to get it all back with Lightyear, which missed by a… uh… lightyear. On the Disney side, Raya & The Last Dragon and Strange World got trashed. And worst of all, the studio mismanaged Encanto, which properly handled was good for no less than $800 million worldwide instead of $261 million.
Journalists tend to forget this bloodbath at the studio. It’s true that all 7 of these films in those 3 years were originals. But I put the failure Chapek, first and last. And I also see this period as a major part of the reason why the studio is still recovering in the release of their animated titles.
Meanwhile, there is nothing to do about Elio’s floppage. 2 of the 3 Pixar films now in production are originals… Toy Story 5 being the exception. Hoppers is due next March.
What if you could talk to animals and understand what they’re saying? In Disney and Pixar’s all-new feature film “Hoppers,” scientists have discovered how to “hop” human consciousness into lifelike robotic animals, allowing people to communicate with animals as animals! The adventure introduces Mabel, an animal lover who seizes an opportunity to use the technology, uncovering mysteries within the animal world that are beyond anything she could have imagined.
Then TS5 next summer… and Gatto in summer 2027.
The story follows a black cat named Nero. Indebted to a feline mob boss, Nero finds himself forced to forge an unexpected friendship that may finally lead him to his purpose.
Sounds like Hoppers has the more Pixar-style premise, while Gatto sounds like a nice story about an anthropomorphic cat.
So what will Disney do after Elio?!?!?!?
Nothing.
That is the ultimate answer to the question of what to do when a bomb falls. Even though live action can move faster than animation, as a rule, all of the major studios are pot-committed, at least for the next 18 - 24 months, to decisions that have already been made.
Back to Pam-m-Ike’s, their deal to run WB movies was June 2022. Their first really-theirs movie was Sinners, which opened in April 2025. That’s how long it takes for a new year of movies to cycle. Some things move a little quicker, some a little slower. But no one can snap their fingers and change a studio’s direction instantly.
I keep writing and saying this, but no one seems to want to repeat it very often. When Iger took control back at Disney in November 2022, he shook up the film schedules a lot. Inside Out 2, fairly early in the process, but which was to be made for Disney+, ended up in theaters and was a smash in June 2024. Moana 2 was a D+ tv series… and was a smash in November 2024. And Lilo & Stitch, literally made for Disney+ with very few changes after they decided to push it into theatrical… another smash in May 2025.
Major changes. Major successes. But also… more than a year before any of them could be converted and released into theaters. Nothing is instant.
Meanwhile. Enrico Casarosa will be directing his 3rd Pixar movie with Gatto… so he’s vested. And Hoppers director Daniel Chong is helming his first feature. And Pixar, as always, will be churning it through their family buffet of ideas and changes and considerations… for better or worse or both.
Opening movies is challenging. And while it always comes down to marketing that first weekend, the pieces that make opening success viable for the marketing departments are not always available.
There is a lot to chew on…
Until tomorrow…