On a sobering holiday Monday, Hollywood is still trying to process what happened over the weekend as two of the biggest franchise labels out there – DC and Pixar – opened costly $200 million budget films that tanked in their debuts.
Following good reception to its trailers and buzz out of CinemaCon, “The Flash” was supposed to debut and outperform the $67 million that “Black Adam” earned in its debut weekend at the box-office.
That didn’t happen, with the movie coming in with a $55 million domestic and a $139 million global three-day opening. According to The Wrap, “The Flash” could be in a position where it will fail to match the $393 million global total of that Dwayne Johnson-led DC film.
“Elemental” is faring even worse with just a $29.5 million domestic opening weekend and just $15 million from the overseas markets where it opened to soft numbers.
These mark the latest in a streak of losses for both companies. DC is still smarting over “Black Adam” and “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” which seriously underperformed, whilst Pixar is coming off last year’s bomb “Lightyear” and a series of movies that ended up going straight to the Disney+ service.
Both are in need of a hit, not just for economic but also public sentiment reasons, and the audience has seemingly rejected the attempts here. It has led to obvious questions as to how this will impact Disney and Warners who count on Pixar and DC, respectively, to help fill out their bottom line.
With “Elemental,” a part of the issue is cost. Disney & Pixar animated films come in at around $200 million – a budget more than double the likes of rivals such as Illumination Entertainment and Sony Pictures Animation, who have had greater success of late with films like the box-office juggernaut “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and the critically acclaimed “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” (both of which cost $100 million each).
“Elemental”, on the other hand, scored only soft positive reviews and was criticised in reviews as looking too similar to past Disney and Pixar fare to be interesting enough to attract an audience more likely willing to wait to see it on Disney+ in a few months.
Familiar IP seems to be the big draw for animation, as the most significant animated hits of recent years have been sequels or based on established IP. The last animated original, Pixar or otherwise, to gross over $500 million worldwide was “Coco” back in 2017.
Meanwhile, “The Flash” faced issues on multiple fronts ranging from the behaviour of its leading actor to shifting sentiment, which went from gushing early reaction to mixed reviews, and the complicating factor of the film being part of a ‘ditched’ universe that will soon be swept away.
The box-office fates of the remaining two pre-Gunn era DC films, “Blue Beetle” and the “Aquaman” sequel, are now a big question. At least with those films, the stars of the films will likely be out there promoting them hard. With the movies sporting $120 million and $205 million budgets respectively, both projects have their work cut out for them.
Source: The Wrap
