Raya and the Last Dragon | March 5, 2021 | Premier Access/Theater simultaneous release

[Jamiem]

1 hour ago, cax16 said:

Just sharing cause I saw this on Twitter, no idea how accurate this stuff is.

 

 

Full article for those interested: https://medium.com/antennaanalytics/disney-premier-access-raya-the-last-dragon-73f7011c6385

 

The most interesting tidbit:

 

Quote

On Saturday March 8th both Disney+ (Raya and the Last Dragon) and ESPN+ (UFC 259) offered in-app purchases. Raya and the Last Dragon earned nearly triple of purchases as UFC 259.

First off they mean the 6th, I had to do some digging to find how many US purchases were made for UFC 259 and found some information:

 

Quote

Big numbers for UFC’s pay-per-view event last weekend. I’m told it logged 800,000 total buys for UFC 259 -- 600,000 on ESPN+ and another 200,000 internationally.

 

Source: https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/SB-Blogs/Newsletter-Media/2021/03/10.aspx

 

So say a little under 3x 600,000 might be ~1.7m buys but wording makes it hard to differentiate between if that is just Saturday or for the whole weekend. 

 

Edit: also important to point out this Antenna Data stuff is all US only, so not close to a full picture of the PA performance. 

Edited March 25, 2021 by Jamiem

[Porthos]

1 hour ago, cax16 said:

Just sharing cause I saw this on Twitter, no idea how accurate this stuff is.

 

 

 

Also to be fair, D+ has more subs now than it did when Mulan bowed, so it might not be exactly fair to compare the number of subs added in each time frame.  Plus I suspect there was a decent increase in subs while WV was airing, which would put it in that "previous 4 week average".

 

Once again, the problem with not being able to look at cold hard numbers (Jamiem's post is helpful in this regard as an attempt to figure out some of those numbers). 😕 

 

[ThomasNicole]

For a movie that cost +$50M less than Mulan and have a very minimalist and cheap marketing campaign, i think 80% of Mulan purchases are actually quite good, considering Mulan did apparently respectable numbers.

 

From my perspective without all the conspiracy theories, if they keep doing this PA after 2 movies and with the same price, it's probably doing well enough. If it was the disaster some people believes, they wouldn't announce 2 more movies including an MCU picture to get the same treatment.

 

 

[Madhuvan]

Raya is 4th on Nielsen acquired movies

[tonytr87]

On 3/25/2021 at 4:42 PM, ThomasNicole said:

For a movie that cost +$50M less than Mulan and have a very minimalist and cheap marketing campaign, i think 80% of Mulan purchases are actually quite good, considering Mulan did apparently respectable numbers.

 

From my perspective without all the conspiracy theories, if they keep doing this PA after 2 movies and with the same price, it's probably doing well enough. If it was the disaster some people believes, they wouldn't announce 2 more movies including an MCU picture to get the same treatment.

 

 

Agreed. I guess they're happy with the numbers, whatever they are. 

 

The interesting thing about all of this is that pandemic moviegoing and the advent of major simultaneous release strategies mean not everything performs as you would think. Many thought because Raya was available for a high fee at home (versus a cheaper sub fee), and was a major Disney animated film, that it would do much better than Tom & Jerry in theaters. But we forget that Disney Plus has many more subs than Max, and WB is putting much more marketing into these than Disney (Raya barely had any exposure). There's something to be said too about the larger attention a theatrical release receives. Anne Thompson has a good Twitter thread and article on this. A streaming-only future would be a death knell for movies as pop culture events. 

Edited April 2, 2021 by tonytr87

[BK007]

They will revert to premiering in theatres because streaming is just a non-event for movies.

 

Anyway, subscriptions is just an extremely poor way to judge whether a movie is doing well, if I wanted to watch Raya or Cruella or Black Widow, I could have subscribed at any time after they made the announcement - not just on OD. Or I could subscribe after a month? 3 months? Whenever it is it becomes free to watch instead of PA.

 

Also, take HBO Max for example, they announced the whole year's slate in December. So should all subs be attributed to WW84 or would it be other movies impending drop that convinces people?

 

Until streaming services are more transparent, the data is useless and they probably never would want to reveal their hand at that. The only way to really measure whether your content is succeeding is by going into details of how many subs streamed them, when they did, how long they did it for. How many new users compared to existing users streamed the content etc. which no 3rd party can ever ascertain. Estimates are BS let me tell you that. 

 

Depending if they are competent or not, they may not even have set some tracking up until months into launch. Probably would need shareholders to force the information out, and then, how many would even know what to ask instead of being led to ask?

 

Anyway, I liked Raya. Hope it overtakes T&J eventually if that's possible. 

[Jamiem]

14 minutes ago, BK007 said:

Anyway, subscriptions is just an extremely poor way to judge whether a movie is doing well, if I wanted to watch Raya or Cruella or Black Widow, I could have subscribed at any time after they made the announcement - not just on OD. Or I could subscribe after a month? 3 months? Whenever it is it becomes free to watch instead of PA.

 

Also, take HBO Max for example, they announced the whole year's slate in December. So should all subs be attributed to WW84 or would it be other movies impending drop that convinces people?

Difference between HBO Max and Disney+ PA is that you have to pay a fee on top of Disney+ to watch Raya so that revenue can be solely attributed to Raya.

14 minutes ago, BK007 said:

Until streaming services are more transparent, the data is useless and they probably never would want to reveal their hand at that. The only way to really measure whether your content is succeeding is by going into details of how many subs streamed them, when they did, how long they did it for. How many new users compared to existing users streamed the content etc. which no 3rd party can ever ascertain. Estimates are BS let me tell you that. 

This is true 3rd parties only give us a small glimpse of how something may have performed. With that said Disney clearly decided to keep PA going for a reason and that is likely due to Mulan and Raya being relative successes internally (we don't know what metric they are using to work this out, but it is clearly what they are working out) otherwise they would not have moved an additional 2 titles to PA one of which is an MCU film. 

 

As for streaming services being more transparent you kind of explained why that won't happen, they have no reason to at all. It sucks for us who love to see the data of how something performed but as I said in another post a few days it's best to watch what Disney do not what they say, if they end up moving their whole slate to PA then it will have been a resounding success, if they move some titles to PA going forward it would be a moderate success, if they stop PA after BW or at the end of the year then it was likely just a helping hand for titles during COVID. 

[ThomasNicole]

Well, we have some official numbers.

 

During the week of Raya release, the movie get 355 million minutes watched on Disney+ according to Nielsen. Remember, the movie came out on friday, so this number counts only the 3 day first weekend of release and US only.

 

https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/top-ten/

 

Now speculating, the movie have 107 minutes, but no one sees the credits, so 100 minutes watched at every play if everyone watched until the end. That means Raya get around 3.55 million plays on it's first 3 days.

 

Of course we have to remember people can split the price or rewatch the movie. But since it counts only it's first days, is hard to believe much of that number is rewatchs for example.

 

So maybe 2-2.5M actually pay for the movie on that period, which brings around $ 60-75M for Disney. And remember, this is US only and counts just the first 3 days. Raya never left the top 10 trending chart on D+ platform, so i think it's possible to think that maybe the movie actually gross $ 120-150M globally in this month available for premiere access and it can reach $ 100M at the box office despite the boycotts, these numbers together can be enough to at least cover their budget and marketing.

 

We'll probably never know for sure, but now it's possible to think it is actually a success, especially for an original animation. Maybe that's why they're continuing to use PA to release some bigger movies like Cruella and even Black Widow, because it can bring good numbers for them.

 

Note: The movie also became available for VOD outside their platform this weekend, and it's doing pretty good on that too, reaching #1 on some charts.

Edited April 5, 2021 by ThomasNicole

[Fullbuster]

 

 

 

Originally slated for March 3 and then April 14, Raya couldn't release in France because of closed theaters (since October), Disney decided to give up on a theatrical release and will put it for free on Disney+ France on June 4.

 

With 400 movies waiting to be released in French theaters this is the best decision to ensure it'll be as successful as possible, in terms of views. Wonder Woman 1984 also abandoned a theatrical release in France.

 

 

[cannastop]

 

How to make the soup from the beginning of the movie.

Edited April 27, 2021 by cannastop

[Fullbuster]

I'm relieved it went beyond $40m at the domestic box office despite everything going against it, it proves the movie would have done very well in a normal market and context.

 

Now excited to see the 2nd wave of interest and enthusiasm for Raya when it comes to D+ in June for free and even for the 1st time inp laces like France

[AniNate]

So this was my first movie in a theater since March last year. Pretty solid one to come back to and I definitely appreciated its unapologetic faith in humanity.

 

Been awhile since I've been a regular on the forum but hopefully the pandemic has brought things into perspective a little. Would like to feel some real joy discussing movies again.

[BK007]

This is 

On 4/3/2021 at 10:46 AM, Jamiem said:

Difference between HBO Max and Disney+ PA is that you have to pay a fee on top of Disney+ to watch Raya so that revenue can be solely attributed to Raya.

This is true 3rd parties only give us a small glimpse of how something may have performed. With that said Disney clearly decided to keep PA going for a reason and that is likely due to Mulan and Raya being relative successes internally (we don't know what metric they are using to work this out, but it is clearly what they are working out) otherwise they would not have moved an additional 2 titles to PA one of which is an MCU film. 

 

As for streaming services being more transparent you kind of explained why that won't happen, they have no reason to at all. It sucks for us who love to see the data of how something performed but as I said in another post a few days it's best to watch what Disney do not what they say, if they end up moving their whole slate to PA then it will have been a resounding success, if they move some titles to PA going forward it would be a moderate success, if they stop PA after BW or at the end of the year then it was likely just a helping hand for titles during COVID. 

Well there's that rumour or maybe actual articles that have Pixar employees feeling affronted that Soul went to D+ for free (and Luca as well) but Mulan and Raya and now Cruela got PA. 

 

So those films can still be attributed a profit whereas Pixar's can't and obviously the marketing or data teams aren't going to let Pixar employees know how well their film has done. It's a definite morale tanker going straight to streaming when it was produced for theatres. 

 

I wouldn't be surprised if HBO Max higher ups have no idea what their data means. It's great to have all the movies announced but then you can't really assign value. It's always estimated. Of course they can have their own internal formula, but it comes down to whether or not executives know what they are doing and in most cases (don't know if it surprises people or not) corporations are clueless making it up as they go along. 

[BK007]

On 4/2/2021 at 8:30 AM, tonytr87 said:

Agreed. I guess they're happy with the numbers, whatever they are. 

 

The interesting thing about all of this is that pandemic moviegoing and the advent of major simultaneous release strategies mean not everything performs as you would think. Many thought because Raya was available for a high fee at home (versus a cheaper sub fee), and was a major Disney animated film, that it would do much better than Tom & Jerry in theaters. But we forget that Disney Plus has many more subs than Max, and WB is putting much more marketing into these than Disney (Raya barely had any exposure). There's something to be said too about the larger attention a theatrical release receives. Anne Thompson has a good Twitter thread and article on this. A streaming-only future would be a death knell for movies as pop culture events. 

 

Do you have a link to the article or thread? Tried searching for it but couldn't find it.

[Menor the Destroyer]

Fun movie. Didn't nail everything but it was sweet and entertaining and visually nice. 

[Morieris]

https://wdwnt.com/2022/08/princess-raya-last-dragon-official-disney-princess/

 

She will officially be part of the Disney Princess lineup.