Box Office Aftermath
Welcome to Black Monday, or given the financials involved Red Monday. We have two flops today for the price of one.
Pixar’s Elemental pulled in its expected anemic performance of $29.5 million domestic and a much worse $15 million foreign. The total for what is quietly being rumored to be Pixar’s last round-up at less than $45 million for the global take against a budget of $250 million. Normally marketing costs would double the budget but not in this case because advertising money was clearly cannibalized to support Indy V (more on that later).
Pixar desperately needed a win to justify its continued existence to Disney’s board of directors. Pixar started getting actively sabotaged during the Chapek Pretendership, Pixar actually had some motivation to stab Chapek in the back as he was the one who started gutting Pixar’s promotional budget and theatrical runs.
There is little doubt that the House the Lasseter Built will be facing severe “restructuring.” As I’ve said, I don’t expect Pixar to be openly shuttered, just “collocated” down from the insanely expensive Bay Area down to the tolerably pricey Burbank. Woody, Lightening, and Mister Incredible still move some merch so something will likely be done in the future with existing franchises under the Pixar label but everyone in Hollywood is quietly admitting this probably is the end.
There is bleak good news for Disney today, “at least we’re not Warner Brothers.”
“Troubled” is a hilarious understatement when describing the production history of The Flash. “Cursed” would be much more accurate. Endlessly delayed by Covid and famous for its star’s mental degeneration into insanity, The Flash was viewed by Warner’s Leadership as “the closest thing we have to winner.” Too much money had been poured into it by the two previous regimes at Warner Brothers. When you hear about a tax write-down, a lot of folks think it’s a one-to-one in terms of dollars you can claim for a write-off. It’s not, it’s a percentage and the percentage is determined by “it depends.” Too much money had already been blown on this thing before Zaslav was brought in to clean house at Warner Brothers. It was testing well enough that Zaslav was obliged to try and put it in the theaters.
The Flash ran at the speed of light into a cliff face. $55 million domestic and foreign box office that did little better at $75 million. This against a budget of god only knows. This was a film that needed to break a billion dollars to see daylight. Stakeholders from the previous regime like Walter Hamada seemed to think it had a shot it. I suspect Zaslav knew it wouldn’t, but if it got as high as $700 million then he could call the losses incurred as “acceptable.” But at a global total of $130 million on opening weekend, it won’t get close to that.
In other box office news:
Spiderverse 2 took a distant third place for the weekend. It’s going to finish its box office run at $300 million against a budget of $100 million. It’s a borderline success at the box office and since Sony doesn’t have a streaming service to cannibalize the secondary and tertiary income streams it is now in the “nothing but gravy” stage.
Transformers Rise of the Beasts crashed to 4th place for its second weekend. That is bad news for Michael Bay helmed franchise. It opened fine but with a $200 million budget its return on investment will be too low.
The Little Mermaid was dead in the water at fifth (I don’t write like this any other time, just when I scribble about Hollywood). The lead-off for Disney’s Year of the Bombs will finish up well below $500 million.
Fast X is (*sorry about this*) out of gas at $686 million. Another Covid orphan Fast X will likely be the last film in the twenty-two-year-old franchise given its $350 million budget. The FBO has always carried these movies but not this time.
Guardian of the Galaxy Volume III has for all intents and purposes finished its box office run at $820 million. Assuming that Disney wasn’t lying about its budget (big grain of salt there). It may just barely turned a profit and appears to be the closest thing to a money maker in the Year of the Bombs.
There were a few other things that didn’t make a blip, I never head of them, and neither did you.
Let me know if you want me to Recommend Sisu in the comments.
Okay, I’m done here.
