Sal

I'm not saying they should necessarily make less movies a year, but if they're regularly producing one good movie and one mediocre movie, then maybe they need to rethink their tactics. There should be no reason to have to 'cover' a bad movie with the profits from a good one when you could focus on quality control and make TWO good movies.

I think some reviewer didn't actually watch the movie: In a unique take on the ordinary citizen who turns into a superhero, Big Hero 6 ads a different twist to an old plot. When trouble strikes, Hiro Hamada becomes Baymax. Who is Baymax, you might ask? He is a giant supersized inflatable robot. Parental Guide to the movies bets that you never saw that one coming. In his life as a supersized inflatable robot, Baymax, he must bring together a bunch of tech saavy kids to fight an evil villain. http://www.parentalguide.org/movie-reviews/big-hero-6-movie.html#sthash.8FV3ISb1.dpuf Yup. Hiro turns into Baymax in this movie.

That's a pretty big range there (33m) It's almost like they're saying "we don't have a good idea of how much this will actually make".

That's the problem with Dreamworks. They're good at making "okay" to "good" movies, but if they cut back on releasing so many they could bring the quality up considerably. Building a rep for great movies is a benefit in the long run, more than releasing lots of movies that barely make their costs back. People should be excited for their movies. Otherwise something is wrong with what they're doing.

I hate that screendaily refuses to show reviews unless you buy a subscription. What does theirs say? Edit: I noticed you changed it to an article at The Wrap, but I still hate Screendaily. Their subscription price is so bloated. "as little as £19 a month"? Give me a break.

The trouble is, he wants to have his cake and eat it too. Hasbro buying would still have him heading DW animation but he also wants to get more money from the sale too. And he can say what he wants about the worth of DW animation, but that doesn't mean the potential buyers will agree. Comparing to Pixar is a bad move because yes, DW has produced more animations faster but overall they have less critical acclaim (and to some degree, less profitability). They've got good profitable ones but also not so good ones. When Disney bought Pixar, Pixar didn't have a single flop. It had an incredible run. If they'd produced twice as many movies but 1/3 of them had been awful, they wouldn't have been worth as much in perceived value. Quality over quantity. Not to say that DW can't do quality (I think given the right push, they can) but to say that they're equal to Pixar in value (when Disney bought it) is a bit much.

Source?

The thing is... how they merchandise something has an effect on how it's seen and perceived by its audience. If a little girl gets a Disney Princess doll clad in pink, then is it really going to matter that the original wore purple or blue? If all of the posters and ads show the princesses in pink, how long does it take to internalize that view of princesses=pink. I know we want to regard marketing/merchandising and the actual movies as different things, but for the kids the two kind of meld together. And you should know that I really enjoy most of the princess movies and I don't view them personally as 'pink princess' movies, but looking at the toys and other things that come with them, I think it's impossible to say that they aren't making the connection (in one way or the other) that pink=for girls and that girls should like pink things. Which really sucks in general because Princess movies are good for both genders and same with non-princess movies like BH6. Edit: also I think you're right about Rapunzel's dress, but I'm colourblind so it's hard to tell.

Is there anything else releasing this weekend? I thought there was...

Getting off topic there, folks. Let's try to have some numbers talk here! Estimates for anything else this weekend?

They may be dumping it in the Jan doldrums, but TLM has shown that being early in the year (at a so-called "bad" time) doesn't necessarily hurt a kids' film. I think a lot of low-budget animated films try to slip in at odd times because kid-fare isn't solely limited to certain times of year. This year shows that people will watch movies they're interested in regardless of when they come out. The dead periods are mostly there because of when studios choose to release.

That's a very good point you made there! Please elaborate!

Joking or not, they do have to tread carefully. They have to weigh the purchase against the prospect of pissing Disney off when Disney brands are accounting for a large amount of products they currently make.

New video released to get folks pumped for Kung Fu Panda 3!

Common colour in princess dresses. See: Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Maid Marian, Ariel (in one scene) and others as well. Also, in a lot of Disney promotional art, they put the princesses in pink dresses whether they wore them canonically or not, thus reinforcing the "princess=pink" thing. For example: And also enforcing the "girls should like pink" thing. There was an article making the rounds about a little girl who was asking why the boy's toys got to be in all kinds of colours but the girls' toys are mostly pink. It works in the inverse too. I've seen at least two instances IRL where a parent would make their little boy put a pink coloured toy (or in one case, sunglasses) down because "those are for girls".

If the girls enjoy the 'boys' movies then why is it annoying? I imagine it'd be more annoying if they only assumed girls will see pink princess movies. Girls have varied tastes too, y'know. My GF is into more comic stuff than I am.

I agree. I'll be thrilled if it's actually good. I just don't want to expect it'll be the best thing ever before going to see it. Build it up too much and it's easy to get disappointed.

Apparently you don't know the meaning of sarcasm. I actually like D&D (the first one) and many movies in that vein. I don't expect a lot from the sequel though.

I'm thinking both BH6 and D&D will have low to mid 30s and IS will be somewhere in the 27-28m range. Then again, IS may get a boost from the people who watched D&D and found it too dumb and wanted to watch something smart in an effort to restore some brain cells.

So we did an educational event at a school on Thursday, teaching kids the basics of how to make comics. A lot of the kids are massively into superhero movies, at least at this school. We got asked a lot of questions about superheroes. There were a few questions about BH6 (Baymax in particular) and a few kids were saying they hadn't seen the movie but wanted to I was surprised at how many of the girls were asking... more even than the boys. Here's hoping the enthusiasm holds up!

Didn't all the animated/family films have similar drops after VD? Most of them took huge boosts but also had huge drops. I really want to know what Thursday numbers are. It'd be a great help in predictions.

BH6 numbers are more relevant to the topic of the thread (listed above as Wed Actuals) than random talk about Interstellar fans because that'd actually be talking about the numbers.

Well, Stephen King co-wrote this one so I'm hoping it's a fairly faithful adaptation, at least.

I mean for today (Thursday). Any matinee numbers?

Not unexpected though. IS's stats were showing 75% of the audience was over 25 so the drops shouldn't be nearly as steep as a kids movie on a school day.