PNF2187

I was gonna say that's at least higher than Cars 2, but even that has a 57 so nope.

My hope personally wasn't for Onward-level reviews, but now that initial reviews are out my hope is for the trajectory of reviews to go up like Onward (low 70s to high 80s on RT) and Coco (high 80s to high 90s) did. But it ain't a great start.

Disney after Cannes 2023: Maybe this goes up like how Onward and Coco did after their festival premieres (and it just might), but this isn't the kind of reception that helps the movie out, especially when you want to build buzz for an original movie three weeks before release. This needed glowing reviews out of the gate, and it did not get that. THR also said this cost $200M, which is even more damning after reading some of these reviews and reactions.

$40M isn't good, but it's not the worst thing. It'll probably outgross Lightyear and at least hit $120M+ unless it somehow has legs as atrocious as that film did. Coco was tracking at $55M-$65M for its 5-day and ended up doing $73M, so there's still room for this to grow and hit $50M+ (provided Cannes reactions are great) and potentially make a run for $200M, although that's wishful thinking at the moment. It could also just go down into the $30M range, which would be really bad, but we can worry about that later. But a Strange World-level bomb, this probably won't be.

Captain Marvel was the last straw for them I think. Aladdin and the set of movies that opened alongside it were the first to employ the verified system.

I think there's still going to be significant portion of kids that grew up on stuff like Frozen and Moana going to see this that haven't seen the animated film for one reason or another, so for them this remake is going to be their first exposure to The Little Mermaid (although I'm sure plenty are still going to see the animated film).

Soundtrack is out digitally. Been listening to Under the Sea... ... and I can't stop listening to it. I have a problem. Mind you, Under the Sea is probably my single favourite Disney song and I'm a sucker for any version of it, so I was probably going to enjoy this regardless, but I fully expect this version to be eviscerated all over the internet. Whatever. I love this version of Under the Sea, so I'll just keep listening to it.

Honestly if this ends up being the case for Elemental then I'm fully anticipating a bomb unless word of mouth is on same level as Inside Out or Coco. Luca was at least a crowdpleaser on Disney+ and had a pretty late embargo. Onward had a festival premiere two weeks prior to opening and the initial reviews out of the gate weren't great. They improved a lot leading up to release, but the general pre-release sentiment was still lukewarm and kind of screwed its opening. In a non-pandemic world, it probably could have legged out well even with word of mouth lagging a bit since there wouldn't have been much direct competition until Trolls 2, and Sonic 1 was 3 weeks old at that point and was a good but not overwhelmingly huge success. Elemental has The Little Mermaid and Spider-Verse opening in the three weeks leading up to its release and both of those on their own is going to be bigger than Sonic was. It also has Ruby Gillman two weeks after (which is probably screwed either way, but two weeks is less than five weeks) on top of all the July and other June releases which it's going to compete for screen space. This needs to be really good... ... which will hopefully be the case given the CinemaCon presentation and the Cannes premiere, but Lightyear's CinemaCon presentation also went great last year, and Dial of Destiny's reviews from its Cannes premiere are not great at the moment. Elemental is independent from those films of course, but we don't have the most encouraging signs at the moment.

I assume this is probably going to be a huge critical win for Pixar (95%+ RT, 8+ average score, 81+ Metacritic) if they're willing to premiere this at Cannes, because it would really suck if the reviews for this ended up being closer to Onward or Luca than say, Coco, Soul or even Turning Red. Then you would have three weeks of critics saying that it isn't among the better Pixar films... and that wouldn't be great.

I honestly had somewhat low expectations going into this, and I was whelmed. I don't think the movie is really all that bad, but outside of the animation (which is absolutely spectacular as always) and the big third act twist (which I quite liked) there's nothing in the film that I feel that another WDAS or Pixar hasn't already done a much better job at. And I don't really get the urge to rewatch it either.

As far as the movie itself goes, I don't know if it'll be all that good plot wise, but I love seeing all the callbacks and references to older games. Soundtrack so far is fantastic as well, hearing Bob-omb Battlefield was a nice treat, hoping for some pieces from Galaxy and 3D World to make it as well. Would love to listen to the rest of it as well - hopefully we'll finally get a Mario OST that's easily accessible on streaming services.

Soul was supposed to go to Cannes as well, before... you know, It did still make it Official Selection that year, although it had already premiered in London.

Decided to compare Strange World's numbers with some other Thanksgiving animated flicks and see what the 3-day and 5-day might play out to be. Here's using Encanto (similar preview to opening day ratio) and Ralph 2 (similar Day 2 drop) as a comp as I think they're most applicable: Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 5-day 3-day Strange World $4,200,000 $2,400,000 $4,576,850 $4,042,039 $2,624,320 $17,843,209 $11,243,209 Encanto $7,553,221 $5,807,558 $11,075,133 $9,780,990 $6,350,371 $40,567,273 $27,206,494 Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 5-day 3-day Strange World $4,200,000 $2,400,000 $5,122,389 $4,996,740 $3,149,248 $19,868,377 $13,268,377 Ralph Breaks the Internet $18,340,440 $10,172,331 $21,711,098 $21,178,540 $13,347,996 $84,750,405 $56,237,634 Between the two, that averages out to $18.8M 5-day, $12.2M 3-day. Which given the exit scores and apparently early Disney+ release, would indicate a final total much closer to that of Treasure Planet ($38.2M) than Raya and the Last Dragon ($54.7M). I also decided to comp the big family Thanksgiving openers going back to Tangled (including Frozen 2 because that basically played like one over Thanksgiving), and the picture isn't as bleak (unless The Croods 2 is involved) but a) the comps still don't look much better for a $135M+ budgeted movie, and b) older comps are less preview heavy and were more reliant on the 3-day weekend for grosses. I also included Treasure Planet because why not. Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 5-day 3-day Strange World $4,200,000 $2,400,000 $3,512,973 $3,249,827 $1,979,233 $15,342,033 $8,742,033 The Croods: A New Age $1,880,615 $2,669,640 $3,907,655 $3,614,945 $2,201,600 $14,274,455 $9,724,200 Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 5-day 3-day Strange World $4,200,000 $2,400,000 $5,475,376 $5,191,918 $3,125,500 $20,392,794 $13,792,794 Frozen II $24,080,546 $14,960,468 $34,130,914 $32,363,967 $19,482,892 $125,018,787 $85,977,773 Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 5-day 3-day Strange World $4,200,000 $2,400,000 $5,109,548 $4,945,693 $3,615,539 $20,270,780 $13,670,780 Coco $13,187,576 $8,918,749 $18,987,822 $18,378,913 $13,435,870 $72,908,930 $50,802,605 Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 5-day 3-day Strange World $4,200,000 $2,400,000 $5,267,384 $5,155,687 $3,264,774 $20,287,845 $13,687,845 Moana $15,519,234 $9,929,639 $21,793,008 $21,330,881 $13,507,512 $82,080,274 $56,631,401 Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 5-day 3-day Strange World $4,200,000 $2,400,000 $5,698,945 $5,377,372 $3,293,025 $20,969,342 $14,369,342 The Good Dinosaur $9,760,677 $6,539,793 $15,529,133 $14,652,875 $8,973,209 $55,455,687 $39,155,217 Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 5-day 3-day Strange World $4,200,000 $2,400,000 $6,449,384 $5,976,995 $3,425,084 $22,451,463 $15,851,463 Penguins of Madagascar $6,138,518 $3,852,885 $10,353,640 $9,595,281 $5,498,523 $35,438,847 $25,447,444 Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 5-day 3-day Strange World $4,200,000 $2,400,000 $5,835,991 $5,510,480 $3,306,722 $21,253,192 $14,653,192 Frozen $15,161,249 $11,037,812 $26,840,236 $25,343,182 $15,207,908 $93,590,387 $67,391,326 Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 5-day 3-day Strange World $4,200,000 $2,400,000 $5,931,534 $5,891,944 $3,471,555 $21,895,033 $15,295,033 Rise of the Guardians $4,837,243 $3,730,382 $9,219,537 $9,158,000 $5,395,928 $32,341,090 $23,773,465 Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 5-day 3-day Strange World $4,200,000 $2,400,000 $5,045,437 $4,547,594 $2,575,630 $18,768,661 $12,168,661 The Muppets $6,510,912 $5,766,753 $12,123,246 $10,927,021 $6,188,759 $41,516,691 $29,239,026 Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 5-day 3-day Strange World $4,200,000 $2,400,000 $5,813,739 $5,517,607 $3,171,773 $21,103,119 $14,503,119 Tangled $11,869,194 $8,070,052 $19,548,825 $18,553,073 $10,665,154 $68,706,298 $48,767,052 Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 5-day 3-day Strange World $4,200,000 $2,400,000 $5,526,622 $4,969,866 $2,875,034 $19,971,522 $13,371,522 Treasure Planet $2,361,000 $2,168,773 $4,994,162 $4,491,046 $2,598,040 $16,613,021 $12,083,248 TLDR: It's not good.

I feel like we've been seeing Wednesday business start to shift a bit towards Thanksgiving proper since COVID. The Croods 2 saw a 42% increase on Thanksgiving, and a lot of movies last year had miniscule drops from their pure Wednesdays. Could be an indicator of more muted Wednesdays going forward, although box office wise this is a very weak Thanksgiving frame, seeing as most of the new releases are imploding.

The critics consensus blurb is pretty down on this one as well but I guess it lines up for being arguably the worst reviewed WDAS film in over 15 years, although even Meet the Robinsons has a more positive blurb to line up with it: Strange World is a Disney milestone in terms of representation -- but as a storytelling experience, this dazzlingly animated adventure offers little audiences haven't already seen. Meet the Robinsons is a visually impressive children's animated film marked by a story of considerable depth.

If we're following RT rules, Multiverse of Madness should have been certified for while but RT took their sweet time to give it a certified fresh rating (probably because of Wonder Woman 1984 and how that fell from like 89% certified fresh to being rotten at 58%) and they ended up certifying it right as it dropped to 74%, but it needed be certified at 75%+, so they dropped the certified fresh marker for the film. If it ever gets back up to 75% then they might certify it again. Lightyear has been certified at 75% for a while now and only recently dropped to 74%. It needs to drop below 70% for it to lose the certified status. Doesn't really change the fact that both films had lukewarm critical reception though.

Gonna be honest, I think there's a decent chance this does worse than Frozen 2 critically. Doesn't seem like it'll help the box office either. Would like to be proven wrong though.

Just got out of this one. Legitimately really enjoyed the first part of this one, but it's a shame the rest of the movie doesn't come anywhere close and didn't particularly excite me save for one all too brief moment near the end. For the lack of a better term, most of the movie felt like it was on autopilot. I didn't end up caring for a lot of the reveals. Definitely the weakest of the 2020s Pixar movies so far. That being said, Sox is precious and needs to be protected at all costs.

It's not entire out of the question. Onward has 88% with a 61 on Metacritic. Not that Lightyear is gonna end up at the same spot, but it's sorta been done before.

I want to say its their weakest teaser since Frozen? It doesn't immediately grab me the same way their other teasers have, but I'm still looking forward to watching it? Just not overly hyped like I was for Big Hero 6 through Encanto. I'll probably see this in theatres(?) unless this gets sent to Disney+ on Christmas again (honestly I think they should just move Black Panther up a week to November 4th and then put that on Disney+ for Christmas, then send this movie over to Disney+ in January - it'll be huge but definitely not as big as Encanto or Turning Red were).

Huh. They went from To infinity and … 🚀 Experience the origin story of a Space Ranger in Disney and Pixar’s #Lightyear, in theaters Summer 2022. 💫 To Every hero has a beginning. Go on an intergalactic adventure with Disney and Pixar’s #Lightyear this June 17, 2022. That's interesting. We shall see in a few months. I like how the poster displays the time instead of the date.

OST is out now. I refuse to listen past the first two songs until I've seen the movie.

CRITICS CONSENSUS Encanto's setting and cultural perspective are new for Disney, but the end result is the same -- enchanting, beautifully animated fun for the whole family.

This one is starting out a lot rougher than I was expecting, at least on MC. 60 is... not great. Edit: At least things are looking up, it's up a bit to 65 now. Hopefully this pulls a Logan.