WEEKEND THREAD: Lightyear implodes with 51M DOM, 85.6M WW. THE LAST PIXAR MOVIE EVER?????😱😱😱 | Dominion #1 with 58.66M, Top Gun 44M

[cannastop]

5 minutes ago, EmpireCity said:

Disney isn't going to abandon theatrical for animation.  I can promise you that.  Not only is it incredibliy stupid, but it also would lead to an exodous of the talented creatives they rely on.  

yeah I kind of agree with this.

[grim22]

2 minutes ago, Eric Lightyear said:

 

[4815162342]

Too busy to see Lightyear this weekend.

 

Might check it out next weekend or the 4th of July weekend if the family is interested 

[ThomasNicole]

Strange World just confirmed today the brother of the protagonist is gay (?) and a big part of the story, and he will have romantic interest with another boy and his parent will know about the whole thing. 

 

Idk if it's going to have a negative impact on box office, impossible to tell so early and without any context. 

 

But one thing is for sure, if a quick same sex kiss on LY is already generating tons of hateful posts on social media and review bombs, just wait until a movie with an openly gay kid drop, it will face an gigantic backlash and sadly, this is never good.

[VanillaSkies]

1 hour ago, Tokugennumataka said:

875M+ by Sunday. 950M by next Sun and 1B the following weekend. 

It opens in Korea on the 24th. 
maybe just maybe will hit 1 billion next weekend if it holds insanely well this weekend. 

[ThomasNicole]

Anedoctal evidence, but here in Brazil the creator of the biggest channel about animated movies did a pool about how his followers planned to watched lightyear. 

 

Well, 64% of 34000 people said they're waiting for Disney+ to watch it. And like i said, he only talk about animations so his audience is probably the most inclined to go in a theater. Very weird.

 

 

 

 

[Eric Duncan]

7 minutes ago, EmpireCity said:

Also, I'm waiting for a single person to explain how this makes long term logical sense that because LY opens to $50m+ that suddenly Disney sees that and decides to abandon theatrical and send animation straight to Disney+.  "Hey, we get 60% of this theatrical money to the tune of maybe $400m or $500m grosses, but we are just going to abandon that money forever going forward to...... spite ourselves?"

 

The reason they sent animation to Disney+ is a combo of covid and hoping it would boost the stock price and get them subscribers, and neither of those things panned out for them.  Chapek is a guy, he isn't Disney, and he is a guy that is 8 months from the potential end of his career at Disney and doesn't have an extension.  THAT is the bigger story here.  

 

 

I think an underrated aspect will be that these movies will lose negotiating power for Disney. Disney gets the best demands and benefits from theater owners because they have the biggest, must-see movies across their entire company. But because Disney+ results in terrible box office for their animated movies (I personally see Strange World and Elemental and the like getting only doing around 250M like Encanto, which would not be good at all), that means Disney loses a lot of their demand power. Something I know Disney does not want to lose with the MCU or Avatar.

 

And sure, even if these movies make a loss theatrically, revenue is revenue. But if it hurts the bottom line, might as well take a loss and place it onto streaming. Silly yes, but I'm not a Disney executive.

 

7 minutes ago, wildphantom said:

I’m kind of with you on where you’re going with thoughts to Disney animated movies, but then I just cannot fathom why they would favour a move towards making less money. 
 

This is where I think it’ll settle down and this seven week window/or Pixar straight to tv stuff will have to take a back seat. 
 

Interesting times. 
I just don’t see any evidence as to why less box office and less PVOD/retail revenue is a good thing for them.  
 

people can crow about Encanto and all the streams it got on YouTube/Spotify with the music at Xmas, but that didn’t stop Frozen/Frozen II  getting the equivalent. And they were over a longer specified time when people were actually paying to see the movie rather than watching it over and over for nothing within a month. 
 

These guys are the masters of squeezing every living dollar out of their products, so I just have to believe they’ve seen the light and this is a temporary thing. 
 

anyways, Lightyear might ignite this weekend but its performance will be scrutinised by us all inevitably. 
 

My mate said to me the other day he was finally going to see MoM this weekend and then somebody told him it was on tv this Wednesday. So he effectively put his money back in his wallet. He’d have gone if it was coming to PVOD. But for free? What’s he going to do? 
 

I find it all so odd. 
maybe they’re just desperate for content until their pipeline catches up with the delays in production on so much that they’d commissioned. 

The reason for these short windows are simple. To executives (not me, please don't yell at me about this), they want to strike while the iron is hot. And to them, getting a movie on their streaming service right when it comes out means they have it while the movie is still in the conversation, and that it will be in the conversation a while longer because it's at home earlier.

 

Again, I know it's silly and makes little sense, and I disagree with this, but it's not like Hollywood is full of bright execs, especially these days in our short-sighted capitalist hellscape.

 

6 minutes ago, grim22 said:

 

Media literacy is dead.

[M37]

5 minutes ago, EmpireCity said:

 

How are theatrical audiences among families shrinking because LY might underperform?  Sonic 2 opened to $70m+ just weeks ago and The Bad Guys is legging it out to nearly $100m on a $23m opening weekend.  

 

This is exactly what I am talking about.  People are connecting the dots that they WANT to connect based on their personal bias in a situation.  

 

Disney isn't going to abandon theatrical for animation.  I can promise you that.  Not only is it incredibliy stupid, but it also would lead to an exodous of the talented creatives they rely on.  

Sonic opened to $72M … and then came immediately back down to early, managed only a 2.63x ($190M), despite basically no competition. Bad Guys crawled its way to $100M by virtue of being the only option for months (see also Sing 2). MoM, despite its massive opening, had much weaker family draw than comparable MCU films 

 

Other than perhaps NWH, has there been any release in the past year that saw sustained family attendance? If the legs are weaker - only propped up by default - and openings smaller, that suggests less total audience, no? 
 

Didn’t outright claim that Disney was going to abandon theatrical animated releases, but if grossing potential has in fact been lowered, it makes signing off on a $200M Pixar budget more difficult. If I have a bias, it’s that I want there to be a continued run of quality animated/family films to take my kids to movies rather than wait for steaming … but data is suggesting that may be putting me in the minority 

[VanillaSkies]

I know I am going to get pulverized by some people on here for this opinions, but… I never expected Lightyear to pull is strong Thursday numbers. Schools are still in for many people (here in Ontario until last week of June) and week nights aren’t generally strong for family movies. 
 

comparing it to TS4 never made sense to me. An older audience showed up for nostalgic reasons for that one. I myself did a Thursday night show for that, but see no reason to rush out for LY. 
 

it’s like expecting Thor 4 to reach Endgame levels simply because one character from the ensemble movie is in it. 
 

Maybe it’s just me, but that just doesn’t compute. Now, if we see weak Saturday/Sunday numbers, then I could see doom and gloom about its legs and final total (and Disney + 30 day window). But we aren’t there…. Yet.

[Taruseth]

2 hours ago, ScareLol said:

 

 

Too low, but still higher than what Lightyear will gross over its whole run in Germany xD.

[Brainbug]

3 minutes ago, Taruseth said:

Too low, but still higher than what Lightyear will gross over its whole run in Germany xD.

 

But the damn Minions movie will probably have 5M+ admissions here.

 

My god, our country is doomed.

[Eric Duncan]

2 minutes ago, Brainbug the Dinosaur said:

 

But the damn Minions movie will probably have 5M+ admissions here.

 

My god, our country is doomed.

We're all minions to the machine mannnnnnn

[titanic2187]

Minion 2 will provide another test for animation in cinema. Honestly, I think animation is one of the most untested genre/medium since reopening. There were just little sample size for us to examine just how well they recovered. This is further complicated by the fact that animation is among the worst affected genre that got sent to streaming. My concern is that the lost of family business to streaming is permanent until something come in to rebuild that habit. 

 

So again, how can 45 days theatrical window be too long??  

[WittyUsername]

28 minutes ago, ThomasNicole said:

Strange World just confirmed today the brother of the protagonist is gay (?) and a big part of the story, and he will have romantic interest with another boy and his parent will know about the whole thing. 

 

Idk if it's going to have a negative impact on box office, impossible to tell so early and without any context. 

 

But one thing is for sure, if a quick same sex kiss on LY is already generating tons of hateful posts on social media and review bombs, just wait until a movie with an openly gay kid drop, it will face an gigantic backlash and sadly, this is never good.

Children’s entertainment for the past decade have been featuring same sex relationships, but people are just now raising a fit over it? Did we go back 20 years or something? 

[Brainbug]

Just now, titanic2187 said:

This is further complicated by the fact that animation is among the worst affected genre that got sent to streaming. My concern is that the lost of family business to streaming is permanent until SOMEBODY come in to rebuild that habit.

 

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[Bigscrubnus]

>5.2 million previews

 

holy fuck this is bad

[JohnnyGossamer]

Box office at large is still healing. I can't see what Sonic two did as bad given it nearly made 200M DOM. Bad Guys wasn't a movie that had much awareness at all has shot at a 4+ multi and getting to 100M+. Minions is going to do well... Probably better than people even want it to do given how most sane people feel about the minions. Turning Red going straight to D+ was stupid. It was stupid then and looks especially stupid now. It would've made 150M+ DOM plus whatever OS... Instead it got none of that and didn't boost D+ subs. We need more data before making these comments because as said the whole of the box office still slowly but surely getting close to what it was pre pandemic.

[John2015]

39 minutes ago, EmpireCity said:

Also, I'm waiting for a single person to explain how this makes long term logical sense that because LY opens to $50m+ that suddenly Disney sees that and decides to abandon theatrical and send animation straight to Disney+.  "Hey, we get 60% of this theatrical money to the tune of maybe $400m or $500m grosses, but we are just going to abandon that money forever going forward to...... spite ourselves?"

 

The reason they sent animation to Disney+ is a combo of covid and hoping it would boost the stock price and get them subscribers, and neither of those things panned out for them.  Chapek is a guy, he isn't Disney, and he is a guy that is 8 months from the potential end of his career at Disney and doesn't have an extension.  THAT is the bigger story here.  

 

 

But Disney board seems to believe in Chapek; the just supported Chapek to fire Peter Rice.

[wildphantom]

I saw a kid watching Luca on his mother’s iPhone in Nandos a couple of months back. Depressing af. That is the kind of image that will ultimately have creatives jumping ship. 
 

Anyways, let’s see what this weekend brings. Maybe families will show up big time over the coming days. Although having seen the movie I do think there’s a substantial number that aren’t prepared for what the film actually is. 

[filmnerdjamie]

8 minutes ago, titanic2187 said:

Minion 2 will provide another test for animation in cinema. Honestly, I think animation is one of the most untested genre/medium since reopening. There were just little sample size for us to examine just how well they recovered. This is further complicated by the fact that animation is among the worst affected genre that got sent to streaming. My concern is that the lost of family business to streaming is permanent until something come in to rebuild that habit. 

 

So again, how can 45 days theatrical window be too long??  

 

It's unfair to put that on Minions 2, I'd argue. 

 

It's the fifth installment of a franchise that began 12 years ago. Feel like the Despicable Me series had it's moment in the sun and audiences have moved on.

 

If this under-performs (like I think it will), it's wrong to hold that against the future of theatrical animation.