Movie Exhibitors Worried After AMC Feels the Burden of Disney’s Latest Flop

Moviegoers wait for a movie to start at the AMC Burbank theater in Burbank, Calif., on March 15, 2021. (Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images)

The Walt Disney Company’s latest animated feature, “Wish,” badly misfired over the traditionally strong movie-going Thanksgiving weekend, extending the studio’s already bleak box-office returns.

While some analysts are noting a combination of factors behind the Disney’s latest poor showing, others equate the studio’s continued inclusion of sexualized and other inappropriate themes in its content for younger viewers to much lower ticket sales. Regardless, the drop in movie ticket revenue has rippled down to film distributors.

“Wish” was expected to bring in an estimated $35 million over the popular holiday while industry experts anticipated the movie would rack up $45–50 million in its first five days. Instead, it opened to a weak $19.5 million over the weekend and $31.7 million over the five-day span.

Per the financial and business news website MarketWatch, AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. felt the blunt force of the film’s failure.

AMC shares dipped 1.5 percent in trading earlier this week, extending a year in which the company’s stock has plummeted 81 percent. For Disney, that’s the worst performance in a decade, according to the Dow Jones Market Data.

“For that movie to come in as low as it is especially in the Thanksgiving frame, which has been owned by Disney on so many occasions, and coming in the wake of “The Marvels, that’s a tough go,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst with American-based global media measurement and analytics company Comscore.

“There’s no sugar-coating it,” he added, noting that during Thanksgiving of 1995, Disney’s “Toy Story” had a $29 million three-day gross and a $39 million five-day gross, much more than this year’s “Wish,” almost 10 years later.

Multiple Factors for Disney’s Latest Failure

Still, Mr. Dergarabedian told The Epoch Times that the failure of Disney’s latest animated musical fable is more complicated than pinning it to one thing. Instead, he said it’s likely due to multiple factors.

“Wish” is about the Wishing Star that so many Disney characters have wished upon over the studio’s century-long history. Actor Chris Pine voices the lead character of Magnifico.

“You could combine creative shortcomings with perhaps others who disagree with the film’s point of view or those critical of the thematic direction that Disney films have taken,” said Mr. Dergarabedian. “I think it’s tough when a movie underperforms because it’s easy to ascribe it to one thing, but there are so many factors to it.”

To Its Demise, Disney’s ‘Wish’ Competes With ‘Trolls’

For Mr. Dergarabedian, one of those factors involved the competition of another Disney film aimed at the younger set, “Trolls Band Together,” which opened a week before “Wish” with positive name recognition.

“Kids have to be excited to see a movie—that creates a groundswell to see it. Just the name ‘Trolls’ and you know what you’re going to get,” explained Mr. Dergarabedian. “On so many levels it’s hard for something like ’Wish‘ to come into the theater. Other than the name Disney, it’s not like that audience knew what it’s about ... ’Trolls’ as a series franchise has done very well. It’s super fun and everybody knows what it is.”

Mr. Dergarabedian also said the fact that “other studios have gotten into the animation game in a very strong way” could also be a factor

“Wish” accompanies a long list of Disney’s underperforming 2023 tentpoles, such as “The Marvels,” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “The Haunted Mansion,” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”

While “Elemental” had a disappointing opening weekend, it ended up earning $495 million globally.

Ticket Losses on the Radar of Theater Owners

As quoted in Variety, Jeff Bock, analyst with Exhibitor Relations, pointed out that while other studios have also suffered setbacks in a post-pandemic world, Disney’s are definitely notable.

“Disney’s misfires certainly are the most prolific considering where they are now versus where they were. And where were they? On the box-office throne. Nearly untouchable,” he said.

Like Mr. Dergarabedian, analysts cite other factors like a reliance on streaming—in Disney’s case, Disney+—creative shortcomings and an over-dependence on already established and popular brands.

David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research (FranchiseRe), told Variety. “At the beginning of the pandemic, the industry embraced short-term thinking and threw itself into the streaming business without thinking about what that might do to movie-going when the pandemic ended. The stock market rewarded it.”

“Audiences became comfortable, and the value of the big screen dropped. By the time Wall Street pulled the plug, the theatrical experience was damaged,” he added.

Disney’s Wokeness Is Damaging

Still, others blame Disney’s lessening success to its greater push to incorporate so-called woke content.

The company in the last five years has been cited by a growing number of parents and viewers for its emphasis of placing diversity, equity. and inclusion (DEI) themes into scenes and storylines—including intimate exchanges between homosexual and trans characters—above promoting traditional values and protecting the innocence of children.

One example includes Pixar’s same-sex kiss in 2022’s “Lightyear.”

Parents traditionally saw Disney as purveying humanistic values about honesty, humility, maturing, self-sacrifice, and improving oneself for the greater good.

Even in 2019, prior to the company’s push toward incorporating DEI themes and characters, the company released “Frozen 2” to the tune of $288 million over two weekends, with the second being Thanksgiving. Back then, those in the movie theater-owning business weren’t feeling anywhere near as fragile as they do now.

CEO Iger Admits Loss of Focus

Meanwhile, Disney’s CEO Bob Iger has admitted the company’s error by focusing too much on quantity over quality during the pandemic.

“We lost some focus,” he said during a recent earnings call.

This week, during a conference called the New York Times’ DealBook Summit, Mr. Iger even acknowledged the studio’s approach to content out loud, indicating a swing toward fun over messaging, according to the conservative outlet Breitbart.

“Entertain first, not messages,” Mr. Iger said on Wednesday. He added that “positive messages for the world” are great, “but shouldn’t be forced on the public or used as the story’s primary focus.”

Regardless, movie exhibitors are reeling from “Wish” not performing like a typical Disney film at Thanksgiving. In a pre-pandemic era, the holiday frame of Wednesday to Sunday would always earn over $200 million.

Movie-Makers and Exhibitors Still Hoping for Holiday Magic

For its part, Disney is hoping that “Wish” still has some holiday staying power left in it. Analysts are too.

At $8.2 billion in current box-office revenue for the full year, analysts have their sights set on $9 billion overall for the North American box office (this includes the United States and Canada) with movies like “The Color Purple,” the comedy “Poor Things,” and “Renaissance: A Film by Beyonce” to be released over the holiday season.

Mr. Dergarabedian, who noted there’s normally a lot of viewing momentum going from Thanksgiving into December, said they’re now counting on the final month of 2023 to get ticket sales to the $9 billion thresh-hold.

“I think we’ll get there ...We could actually have a very strong final push with all these films,” he said.

“But there’s no way to dance around the fact, you can’t just rely on the brand,” he added.