Entertainment

Disney’s latest issue? Movies are too big for their own good


Imagine a studio executive watching a movie that grossed over $100 million and thinking, “but is that enough?”

That’s both the madness and the truth that Disney has to face with many of its feature films.

The Mouse House has dropped live-action updates on “Little Mermaid” last weekend, and the film made a whopping $96 million in its opening weekend. The four-day holiday weekend raised that number to $118 million.

The film, starring Halle Bailey as Ariel, was just below box office estimates. That’s still great news for the studio, but there’s a string to it.

More than a few, really.

The film’s global cume was much lower than expected, and China is mainly to blame according to Deadline left.com.

The Little Mermaid’s China ticket sales were non-existent, starting at $2.5 million. As US titles sell out quickly in China, some believe the Rob Marshall-directed musical might not even reach the double-digit final gross there.

The site cited the so-called international reaction to casting a black actress as Ariel, originally a white character voiced by Jodi Benson in the 1989 animated original.

That seems impossible.

The American audience was unhappy about the casting issue and it generated a lot of press in the US. More, “X fast” is doing well overseas, and that story boasts an incredibly diverse cast.

The bigger problem is obvious.

Movies like “The Little Mermaid”, with huge budgets and equally large P&A (Printing and Advertising) fees, have to earn huge sums of money to break even.

That might not be possible for this “Mermaid”.

The movie could cost Disney $20 million, according to Deadline estimates, or luckily break even. That’s not why studios offer live-action versions of their classic properties.

They are meant to fatten the bottom line. Disney’s 2019 Movie “Aladdin” Earns north of 1 billion dollars globally, for example.

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Disney’s movie line is one of the company’s strengths. The company owns the MCU, the “Indiana Jones” story, Pixar, etc. And let’s not forget the invaluable intellectual property over the decades, from Peter Pan to Pinocchio.

However, more dark clouds await the studio this summer.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last month, attracting The comment is bland to the point of brutality. That film will expand on paper, but it can fade quickly if it can’t deliver the goods.

Similarly, Pixar’s “Elemental” also received dinged by some of the original criticsand estimated to bring only 40 million USD on its June 16th opening weekend. That’s a far cry from what most Pixar movies create in their original frame.

Add that to Disney’s huge list of woes – declining Disney+ subscribers, plunging stock prices, and a once-gold brand. tarnished by political tricks.

Disney isn’t the only studio forced to squeeze every penny out of its blockbuster movies. Famous Sony lost a reported 70 million dollars from the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot even though the film crossed the $100 million mark in North America.

The problem for Disney, however, is that the company has too many other things to worry about these days.

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