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Pixar and DC are said to be the crown jewels for Disney and Warner Bros. respectively. But the dismal opening weekends of DC’s The Flash and Pixar’s Elemental have continued those two brands’ recent slump — and it’s time to declare red alert.
Whether this alert applies to the box office in general, or to these two titan brands in particular, is likely to be the subject of intense debate in Hollywood over the coming days and weeks. Elemental’s poor start follows 2022’s underperformer Lightyear and 2022’s Disney+ titles Turning Red, 2021’s Luca, and 2020’s Soul amid COVID-19 bad international box office had pandemic. And DC is suffering new pains after poor performances in late 2022’s Black Adam and earlier this year’s Shazam!: Fury of the Gods.
“Brands can only take you so far. It’s about the films themselves, and they have to deliver,” said Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “Audience today is very smart and discerning, and in today’s world, only those films that have overwhelmingly positive reviews and/or audience response are the ones that make it at the box office.”
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By failing to surpass that higher bar, “Flash” and “Elemental” have sparked a wave of large-scale questions for two of Hollywood’s top studios to grapple with: How does this affect the Pixar hit machine, which has dominated much of the Hollywood franchise? drives Disney’s global business? ? And what impact does Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav have on his plan to rebuild the superhero business under the DC brand? Does this mean that the theater industry cannot recover after the COVID crisis?
Dergarabedian noted that there are no easy answers to these questions, but he’s confident that Pixar and DC aren’t stuck in a hole so deep that a big hit can’t pull them out, regardless of whether it’s at This hit is about a future Pixar film with a premise that will captivate larger audiences or a successful DC reboot with Superman: Legacy, which is currently slated for a Summer 2025 release.
The story goes on
“Look at what happened to Fox and the ‘X-Men’ movies, which did poorly with audiences for years until they came out with ‘Logan,’ which was a big box office hit,” he said. “A poor reputation with moviegoers based on previous films may make marketing difficult, but audiences have shown they are willing to listen to strong word-of-mouth.”
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With the first trailer released over Super Bowl weekend and garnering huge social media response, The Flash was expected to do better at the box office than the $140 million global opening weekend hosted by Dwayne Johnson “Black Adam”. Instead, the three-day opening film collapsed at $55 million domestically and $139 million worldwide, earning a “2” in CinemaScore viewership polls.
Considering that “Black Adam” received a B+ from CinemaScore but plummeted by its second weekend, “The Flash” now finds itself in a position where it very well doesn’t even reach the paltry total of $393 million Black Adam could approach a budget of over $200 million before marketing costs, with both films accompanying last spring’s Shazam!: Fury of the Gods in the recent series of DC flops.
Elemental also has a budget of $200 million – as is usual for Pixar films – and fares even worse with a domestic opening weekend of $29.5 million. Elemental was never expected to do well at the box office given its opening estimates of $40 million, but after adjusting for inflation, this is now the worst start in Pixar’s history.
While theaters aren’t necessarily suffering right now given the plethora of movies they have to show, including Sony’s hit Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Pixar and DC were among the biggest films in the industry before the pandemic reliable manufacturers of tent pole hits. In a market where they are returning to this high standard of performance, the chances of box office takings returning to pre-COVID-19 levels are much greater.
But it’s clear from The Flash and Elemental that these franchises, and the studios that produced them, aren’t as resonating with audiences as they used to be, and there are plenty of hard lessons to be learned about why these movies are Had problems and where Pixar was and DC goes from here.
Warner Bros.
Yes, Ezra Miller was a factor
It’s a studio nightmare when the lead actor of your big-budget superhero film finds itself caught up in a series of violent and unpredictable run-ins with the law after production is completed. And while Warner Bros. tried to sidestep “The Flash” star Ezra Miller’s multiple arrests, it proved too much to overcome.
Miller’s behavior certainly spoiled the hype surrounding The Flash on social media in the weeks leading up to its release, but the vast majority of moviegoers don’t engage in such discussions. However, the scandals have other ramifications outside of the internet as well, as Warner Bros. decided not to reveal Miller to the media. Therefore, the actor appeared only at the premiere of the film and made a short speech to the viewers.
When the lead actor goes on a major media tour to support a tentpole film, that’s no guarantee of box office success – just look at how “Black Adam” did, despite Dwayne Johnson promoting it with all his might has – but such an absence can be a huge hurdle. This is especially true for comic book movies, as studios need to get audiences to embrace the actor/superhero combination to ensure long-term franchise potential.
With scandals causing Miller and her legendary co-star Michael Keaton to skip the premiere and press tour to continue filming a sequel to Beetlejuice for Warner Bros. in London, The Flash didn’t have the top two Stars who could promote it. While director Andy Muschietti and co-star Sasha Calle, who plays Supergirl, have continued in their absence, that marketing hurdle was too big to overcome.
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Pixar films are no longer theatrical events
Eight years ago, Inside Out came out right after Jurassic World, a film that would become Universal’s highest-grossing film of all time. Despite this stiff competition and without the benefit of a pre-existing franchise, “Inside Out” grossed $90.4 million and grossed $857 million worldwide. The film’s director, three-time Academy Award winner Pete Docter, is now creative director at Pixar.
But Docter, along with the Disney cinema crew, faces a major challenge as the Pixar name alone is no longer enough to sell tickets now that Elemental has given the studio its second straight Midsummer flop. It follows last June’s Toy Story spin-off Lightyear, whose director Angus MacLane and producer Galyn Susman were among the 75 recently laid off Pixar employees.
Disney gave “Elemental” an extensive marketing campaign and a Cannes Film Festival premiere, doing everything it could to sell the film as a must-see on the big screen and best with 3D glasses. But the tale of a cute water creature named Wade and a hot-tempered fire creature named Ember falling in love in a city full of elementals failed to captivate aspiring moviegoers as the film was also dismissed on social media prior to release, similar to the Disney animated film ” Zootopia” it should be interesting.
James Gunn and Peter Safran, the two new CEOs of DC Studios. (Photo illustration by TheWrap, Warner Bros.; Getty Images)
The DC brand is toxic and James Gunn still has work to do
When Shazam!: Fury of the Gods flopped last spring, the poor numbers were in part due to tepid reviews; But both Warner Bros. insiders and analysts who spoke to TheWrap cited recent news that new DC Studios bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran would be rebooting the DC Universe as another contributing factor.
With recent films like Wonder Woman 1984 being poorly received and the cinematic universe in which films like Shazam 2 resided coming to an end, the catch most contemporary superhero films have is in the build-up to future sequels and a tease larger, interconnected storyline, no longer there for DC. With its time-consuming story and references to previous films from Tim Burton’s Batman to Man of Steel, there was hope that The Flash could still pique the interest of DC fans curious about the surprise appearances and possible ones reboots there are goods in stock.
Instead, The Flash’s plummeting success and tepid CinemaScore rating have shown that audiences no longer trust DC movies as we know them to deliver quality. While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has lost some of its fan appeal over the past year and hasn’t shrunk from flopping itself, the recent success of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has shown that it’s still a big one can bring success.
The DC Extended Universe had no salvation as the only post-COVID DC hit was The Batman, a film set in its own timeline and whose sequel will be separate from the new universe Gunn are launching with Superman Will: Legacy” in 2025. Whether moviegoers will be willing to give the new vision of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” director remains to be seen.
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Pixar’s budget model may not be sustainable
While some Hollywood creative accounting is in progress, many Hollywood studio animation divisions – from Illumination and DreamWorks at Universal to Sony Pictures Animation and Paramount’s Nickelodeon – produce their films with budgets ranging from $70 million to $90 million. Illumination’s smash hit The Super Mario Bros. Movie was produced on a budget of $100 million, an unusually high price tag for Chris Meledandri’s animation house.
But Pixar and Walt Disney Animation regularly produce films for twice that amount, with “Lightyear” and “Elemental” both budgeting $200 million, according to insiders. Big-budget animation has been a hit for years for Pixar, and it’s investing in new software to improve the visuals of its computer animations. Combined with the stories curated by former Pixar boss John Lasseter, the studio spawned big hits from Finding Nemo in the early 2000s to Coco and The Incredibles 2 in the late 2010s.
But recent animated hits like Mario and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse have wowed audiences with their visuals, taking away the edge Pixar once had. With Walt Disney Animation Studios’ upcoming Thanksgiving animation film Wish also having a budget of $200 million, and Pixar’s original 2024 film Elio likely to do the same, both of Disney’s animation houses may have to contend with the prospect struggling to tighten their belts While Disney is able to turn its films into sources of merchandising revenue, films continue to struggle in theaters.
DisneyPixar
DC’s nightmare year could only get worse
If audiences have left DC by the time Gunn’s reboot plans hit the big screen, then the two remaining superhero films Warner Bros. has to release this year could find themselves in trouble just like The Flash.
In August, the DC movie “Blue Beetle” will hit theaters to bring Latin audiences to see Xolo Maridueña in the role of Jaime Reyes, with the special hope that Mexican audiences will relate in a way developed that “In the Heights” didn’t do. But with a reported budget of $120 million, “Blue Beetle” needs to be successful across all demographics, and the poor image DC currently has with the public could poison that.
The same could also happen with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which will be released over the holiday season alongside two other Warner Bros. films, Wonka and The Color Purple. While the best-case scenario is that these films will cater to the interests of vastly different audiences and find a way to coexist, Aquaman 2 is meant to be the big four-quadrant play, and the conversations surrounding this release may be more revolving about DC’s poor track record and the offscreen troubles of the film’s co-star Amber Heard, rather than everything that actually happens in the film.
Pixar’s problem may be bigger than just one studio
While some may attribute Pixar’s troubles to the quality of their recent films, audience response to Elemental doesn’t bear that out. “Elemental” received a one on CinemaScore and has a 91% viewer rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Several of Pixar’s COVID-era films in development under Pete Docter, including Soul, Luca, and Turning Red, have also received strong reviews from critics and audiences despite the move to streaming release.
So the problem isn’t necessarily word of mouth, but rather the way Disney and Pixar are selling these original films in a world where audiences don’t immediately buy a ticket as soon as they see the bouncing desk lamp logo. Unfortunately, there are no recent original hits for Disney to learn from. The last animated film not to be a sequel or based on an existing IP to gross over $500 million worldwide is Pixar’s 2017 Coco.
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Since cinemas reopened, the big hits from animation have been sequels to Minions, Puss in Boots and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, as well as Mario, a film about the most famous video game character of all time. Disney’s Encanto may have been the original big hit after the shutdown, but the COVID-19 Omicron variant, released in November 2021, kept families at home, where they quickly embraced the film when it released on Disney+ for Christmas.
And the hardest part is that the next big original animated movie isn’t coming out until the holidays, which is Disney’s Thanksgiving Wish. After that, Illumination will test its growing popularity with an original film of its own: Migration, a film about a family of ducks flying south for the winter, written by The White Lotus creator Mike White.
If “Migration” can catch on and become a big holiday hit, “Illumination” could end up showing the rest of Hollywood, including Pixar, which original films are of interest to families and general audiences, and the belief that it’s supplanted them further cement Pixar as the best animation studio in town.
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