A Disney animated film released over the Thanksgiving weekend ended up being a total bomb at the box office. The film, Strange World, brought in an anemic $18.6 million during its five-day opening, the second-worst Disney opening in history. Only the pandemic-era release of West Side Story, directed by Steven Spielberg, performed worse, according to Variety.
Disney was expecting a $30-$40 million opening.
Strange World was billed as the first Disney movie to include an openly gay main character. Why the woke folk at Disney thought this was a selling point for a “family movie” is beyond me.
Nevertheless, Disney assembled an all-star voice cast including Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Lucy Liu, and Gabrielle Union and gave the film a budget of $180 million.
Variety reports that the film is now expected to lose $120 million. “Normally this time of year, a Disney family film is the big draw,” Paul Dergarabedian, a senior Comscore analyst, told Variety. “It shows we’re still recovering and adapting to the constraints of the pandemic.”
Right. Let’s blame the pandemic for Disney’s stupidity.
As with other recent Disney animated movies including Lightyear (another disappointing box office flop), Strange World sought to crowbar progressive causes into the film, including for the first time in Disney’s history an openly gay main character. However, one liberal movie reviewer said Disney would likely use homophobia to shield it from the film’s obvious shortcomings.
Disney is 100% going to blame STRANGE WORLD's inevitable bad box office on the fact that there's an openly gay character in the movie when in reality, it's going to flop because they didn't market it at all. They'll use this as an excuse to not have queer rep ever again. pic.twitter.com/diD7It4Bk4
— Jordan Woodson #GlassOnionSweep (@jordanjwoodson) November 17, 2022
Indeed, for a big-budget movie released to kick off the Christmas season, Strange World did not get the full Disney marketing treatment. This, more than the main character, who is gay, probably contributed to the bad opening.
But the gay character definitely played a role.
Overseas grosses may not provide much of a lifeline. “Strange World” was similarly jilted at the international box office with $9.2 million from 43 markets. Like most Hollywood films, it won’t play in China or Russia, two major international markets, due to geopolitical tensions. Beyond that, Disney opted to not submit “Strange World” to several smaller markets, including the entire Middle East, Malaysia and Indonesia, because the movie features a gay character. Films with LGBTQ references have been regularly targeted by censors in those territories and Disney wasn’t willing to cut out parts of the movie to comply with their guidelines.
One dad reports that his kid wanted to leave about 10 minutes into the showing.
Took the kids to the movies today to watch a Disney cartoon called “Strange World”.
Within 10 minutes of the movie, my 10 year old son said “Dad, I have no desire to watch this movie. Can we leave?”
We left.
The leaders at @Disney have forgotten who the PAYING customer is. pic.twitter.com/9auHGgUZSH
— Patrick Bet-David (@patrickbetdavid) November 27, 2022
In short, the movie failed in its primary objective: to entertain the audience. Will the return of former Disney CEO Bob Iger fix what’s broken at Disney?
Disney’s latest flop comes on the heels of the return of its iconic former CEO Bob Iger who is expected to turn around the ailing company after suffering several financial setbacks. Iger is taking over for Bob Chapek, who openly embraced progressive social causes while leading the media company, drawing the ire of Governor Ron DeSantis and fellow Florida Republicans.
Disney+, the company’s touted streaming service, has lost more than $8 billion since it first launched three years ago.
Oh, yeah. Let’s say it all together: “Get Woke. Go Broke.”
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