Though “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” will rule the Thanksgiving box-office this weekend with $64 million for the five-day holiday, all eyes are on Disney’s other effort at the box-office this weekend.
Disney Animation’s “Strange World” has straight-up bombed. The film’s projections kept lowering and now officially stand at just $18.6 million for the five days domestically.
The overall global tally is even worse at $28 million worldwide – a terrible debut for a film with a production budget above $135 million. Not helping are the reviews which have been good albeit tepid, both from critics and audience exit polls.
As a result, Deadline reports that analysts are already estimating “Strange World” will rack up a loss of around $147 million for the Mouse House. Much like with “Encanto” last year, the film is expected to debut on Disney+ around Christmas.
It has begged the question, why did they go theatrical with this in its current state? Whatever the case, the newly returned Bob Iger has now put distribution decisions back in the hands of the studio’s creative heads.
The result of this is, according to the trade, is that Disney is likely to push theatrical movies to the cinema, and only lower-budgeted ones will debut directly for the service – no more splashy direct-to-streaming film spending to bring in subscribers.
That could mean films like “Disenchanted” and “Hocus Pocus 2” would get cinema releases (so too presumably 20th Century Studios titles like “Prey”). However, Disney has not officially commented on whether there will less movies going straight to Disney+ as Iger takes over.
Source: Deadline
