Considering The Batman was the pandemic’s second-biggest opening weekend, it seems like the theatrical experience has finally come to life in 2022 after the omicron option caused low profits and resulted in several films shuffling release dates in beginning of the year. (Please, Sony Pictures, stop giving us Morbius Blue Balloons.) Given this resounding success, it looks like two major film releases should double the industry’s box office this coming weekend: Blushing, Pixar’s latest animated film, and The Adam Project is a sci-fi blockbuster that reunites Ryan Reynolds with Free Guy director Shawn Levy. There is only one problem: none of these films are being released in theaters across the country.
As Disney announced in January amid a micro-micron surge, Blushing, which is about a 13-year-old girl who finds herself transforming into a giant red panda when she gets emotional, will bypass traditional release and debut on Disney+ instead. (For international markets where the company’s streaming service is not available, the film will be released in theaters at a later date.) Red Transformation is now Pixar’s third consecutive product to go straight to streaming after Onion and Soul. . Adam, meanwhile, was being watched by Tom Cruise and Paramount Pictures back in 2012 before the project bogged down in development hell and was eventually acquired by Netflix in 2020. As Netflix usually does, Project Adam has a limited theatrical release that coincides with its streaming debut, where the vast majority of people will see the film.
But while Turning Red and The Adam Project have gone their separate ways to land on their respective streamers, their fortunes – after a great weekend to celebrate the opening of another Batman adaptation – speak to more significant shifts in the industry and what kind of movies generally available. chance for box office success. The pandemic has pushed major studios to increasingly favor IP-based titles, but the result is fewer opportunities than ever before to create and publish original stories on the biggest possible screen while viewers are left content with an increasingly myopic landscape.
It’s no surprise Netflix’s handling of Project Adam, a time-traveling gamble in which a pilot from the future must team up with his younger self to save the world. With the notable exception of noisy Oscar contenders like The Irishman and The Mank, the company doesn’t place much value on theatrical productions. (And even on those rare occasions, theatrical releases are short-lived and limited to major markets.) But the fact that Project Adam is an original blockbuster-style production starring Reynolds, Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldanha and Jennifer Garner is on Netflix. First, it’s an indication of how major studios continue to prioritize existing franchises. “I’m grateful to Netflix for being committed to making movies like this, original stories based on nothing more than an idea,” Reynolds told The Hollywood Reporter in February.
However, Project Adam isn’t just a spectacular film spearheaded by a proven star – it’s also directed by the guy responsible for the only non-IP film to make the top 10 grossing films of 2021 domestically. . But, as Levy himself acknowledged in an October Insider interview, Free Guy, which was a relic of 20th Century Fox before it was acquired by Disney, is part of a dying generation of major studios. Filmmakers these days have a hard time finding a studio willing to pay an eight or nine figure bill for a film that isn’t based on pre-established intellectual property. This is by no means a new trend, but Project Adam is another notable example of a film that would probably have hit theaters even a decade ago – starring Tom Cruise, perhaps, no less – that should have been be instead settle for live streaming. In 2022, it seems like the only original tents that stand a chance of hitting multiplexes is director Christopher Nolan.
The situation with Turning Red is a bit more mysterious as Disney has taken different approaches to its animated films since the pandemic. Last year, the aforementioned Luca went to Disney+ at no additional cost, while Encanto received a traditional theatrical release, and Raya and the Last Dragon was released simultaneously in theaters and available on the streamer for an additional $30. (In 2020, Pixar’s “Soul” went to Disney+ at no additional cost, and “Onward” was released on the cusp of a pandemic hitting the US, which helps explain the disappointing box office performance.) There’s nothing wrong with Disney experimenting with multiple release models over the course of pandemic, but it goes to show that three Pixar films in a row weren’t even given a chance to impact the box office. As a Pixar insider told The Hollywood Reporter in January, those in the studio are “disappointed” that Blushing is heading to Disney+, though they understand that families aren’t returning to theaters en masse.
Indeed, the animated films that hit theaters don’t even come close to making money before the pandemic: No animated film crossed the $100 million threshold domestically in 2021. Encanto came the closest, earning just over $90 million, but it wasn’t until the film became available on Disney+ that it turned into a cultural phenomenon, highlighted by its catchy soundtrack that didn’t catch on. #1 on the Billboard music charts. Superhero franchises can count on audiences to come to theaters regardless of the number of COVID cases, but families, especially those with kids who can’t be vaccinated, can just wait to air family movies at their convenience. .
These shifts in movie search habits still don’t explain why Disney made its latest Pixar releases available on Disney+ for free, something it avoided with films from Walt Disney Animation Studios. Industry analysts suggest a variety of reasons for this practice, including everything from studio titles leading to high Disney+ subscriber retention rates to reluctance to see poor box office receipts dilute Pixar’s prestigious brand. (As with Netflix and other streaming services, Disney+ is selective about disclosing viewer data, so it’s hard to know how well movies are doing when all the company is offering are press statements with vague platitudes that movies Pixar was “enthusiastically received.” Perhaps the biggest test for the relationship between Disney and Pixar will come in June, when the studio is set to release Lightyear, a Toy Story spin-off. quote from Chris Evans’ Twitter account, “the origin story of the man Buzz Lightyear on which the toy is based”. (Of course, this isn’t confusing at all.) All signs point to Lighter sticking to the theatrical release, though nothing is set in stone in an uncertain age of disruptive COVID options. However, given that Lightyear is a spin-off of Pixar’s most successful franchise, there’s plenty of incentive for Disney to reap the benefits of this summer’s box office even if they fail to reach pre-pandemic highs.
Of course, the fact that Lightyear will be Pixar’s first film in theaters in more than two years highlights a broader shift among major studios in which intellectual property remains the lead and original ideas like Turning Red and The Adam Project are increasingly being dropped. . The pandemic has heightened fears not only about the future of cinema, but also about the future of filmmaking. Be that as it may, the theatrical landscape is great news for Batmans and Spider-Men around the world – and bad news for everyone else.