Wish | Walt Disney Animation Studios | November 22, 2023 | Chris Pine plays a baddie DILF, new trailer has dropped, reactions are reactions

[PlatnumRoyce]

51 minutes ago, AniNate said:

Does seem like Disney is a lot more invested in this than Strange World. Like they know exactly what people want out of their movies and that's what the marketing has shown off so far.

That's not a useful comparison. Deadline's writeup on why Strange World flopped literally spent 2 paragraphs justifying why it would have been a massive PR disaster if Disney had dumped the film on D+ or just shelved the movie (what deadline's source wanted after a bad early test screening). " Despite what deadline's profit estimate page said about Strange World's marketing campaign, "RelishMix noticed that Strange World awareness levels on social were 22% below norms for family animated films." Disney clearly dumped the film and quite possibly would have completely shelved the theatrical release under different circumstances. 

 

https://deadline.com/2022/11/strange-world-bombs-box-office-disney-glass-onion-bob-iger-bob-chapek-1235182222/
 

Edited August 21, 2023 by PlatnumRoyce

[AniNate]

I mean it seems like that article completely agrees with me?

[Mojoguy]

Disney probably didn't want to dump the movie with their first gay lead onto D+ since it would make them look really bad.

 

But SW would have flopped even if lead was straght. Test screenings were apparently terrible.

 

What should have happened is it shouldn't have been made in the first place. Did they learn nothing from Treasure Planet and Atlantis? These kind of  Sci Fi animated movies just don't sell.

 

[AniNate]

The problem with their sci-fi flops is they didn't have much of a hook beyond their concepts. Lilo & Stitch arguably was a "sci-fi" movie but it also had distinct characters at its core with resonant interpersonal drama. Strange World's marketing hook was "Jules Verne homage" and that was pretty much it. Disney's been most successful when they've conceived memorable characters that, to be blunt, sell a lot of plushies.

[El Squibbonator]

Quote

Does seem like Disney is a lot more invested in this than Strange World. Like they know exactly what people want out of their movies and that's what the marketing has shown off so far.

 

I disagree. I mean, the situation isn't as bad as it was with Strange World, but I'm still seeing far fewer internet ads and TV commercials that I did for comparable movies in the pre-pandemic era like Tangled, Moana and the Frozen movies. And if you still think I'm imagining things, here's a Google search of how much people searched for Frozen II, Encanto, and Wish in the lead-up to their respective releases. I also included Strange World, to act as an "outgroup".

But what I found is that the search interest for Wish is trending closer to that of Strange World than to Frozen II or even Encanto. That's not a good sign. Heck, I'll even throw in Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie  to see what other upcoming animated movies this year look like in comparison. Wish still comes up short.

Now, those charts were only for the past 30 days. What happens if I make a chart for the past five years? Well, we still see that interest levels for Wish looks closer to those of Strange World than anything else. And even that might be an overstatement. See that tiny little micro-bump in June 2022? That was when the first teaser for Strange World came out. Encanto's teaser didn't generate much interest by pre-pandemic standards either, but it still generated twice the search interest that Strange World did. But with  Wish? We get nothing.

No matter which way you slice it, Wish isn't generating the kind of interest that comparable pre-pandemic movies did. That's concerning. I could think of any number of reasons for this-- maybe the WGA strikes are affecting Disney's ability to promote the movie, or maybe audiences are just jaded and apathetic towards Disney Animation after Strange World. I don't know. 

[SpiderByte]

Keep in Mind Encanto had a mediocre theatrical run and then was a massive, massive streaming superhit

[Mojoguy]

This movie comes out in 2 months. Zero marketing recently.

[YM!]

Disney just sucks at marketing recently. Like apart from Avatar, there hasn't really been a strong campaign. The marketing guy seems to sell everything like a Marvel/SW movie in that hoping the brand is enough.

[Mojoguy]

Just now, YM! said:

Disney just sucks at marketing recently. Like apart from Avatar, there hasn't really been a strong campaign. The marketing guy seems to sell everything like a Marvel/SW movie in that hoping the brand is enough.

I understand no interviews because of the strikes.

 

But they can release more footage of the film. Make people more aware it is coming out.

[Bob Train]

cast promotion does not matter for animated movies, particularly since most of the cast is relatively unknown.

[JustLurking]

SW was both something with basically 0 demand (animated sci-fi seems to be the ultimate BO poison at this point) and honestly just BAD, this film was just lame and Disney definitely knew it which is why it got completely dumped

 

Wish is both something people actually want from Disney and I think will probably be solid, Disney doing late promo for films in this slot is not unusual but they'll probably begin the ramp-up soon

[AniNate]

Trying to judge the marketing in a quantitative sense more than a month out is typically futile. I also have my doubts that Google's filtering for such a broadly used word as Wish is as intuitive as it was for Strange World (or Encanto for that matter).

 

Ultimately what matters most is if people like the movie. I do distinctly recall there being very little engagement with Frozen before the movie came out. Also as Elemental has proven, even shitty marketing isn't necessarily a death sentence. I would appreciate if they put out something new soon though just to quell this narrative.

 

 

Edited September 18, 2023 by AniNate

[El Squibbonator]

Quote

I also have my doubts that Google's filtering for such a broadly used word as Wish is as intuitive as it was for Strange World 

I took that into account. Google Trends actually does distinguish between "Wish" as a search term and "Wish" as the title of the movie. I made sure to always use the latter when I was constructing those charts. 

 

Quote

animated sci-fi seems to be the ultimate BO poison at this point

If Elemental was able to leg it out to $450M worldwide, then I think Pixar's upcoming Elio might have potential. 

 

1 hour ago, AniNate said:

Trying to judge the marketing in a quantitative sense more than a month out is typically futile.

You'd think that would be the case, but then again that's why I included other movies for the sake of comparison. It turns out that there's a recurring pattern of when interest in these movies is at its height. It normally first starts to flare up when the first teaser is released, then rises again after the first full trailer, and then gets a huge spike during the theatrical release. This is consistent for most of the movies on the chart I made-- Frozen II, Encanto, and to a much lesser extent, Strange World. Wish was the only exception. 

 

Strange World didn't fail because of its genre; it failed because Disney put very little effort into marketing it. With a good marketing push I imagine it could have done about as well as Wreck-it Ralph or even Big Hero 6. That's why I'm concerned for Wish. Like Strange World, the marketing for Wish seems oddly sparse, especially for what's supposedly their "100th-anniversary movie".

 

I'm not just going off internet data when I say this, either. I work in a supermarket, and normally if a new Disney animated movie is coming out in November, I see merchandise lining the shelves starting right around this time of year. But not this time. 

Edited September 18, 2023 by El Squibbonator

[AniNate]

41 minutes ago, El Squibbonator said:

I took that into account. Google Trends actually does distinguish between "Wish" as a search term and "Wish" as the title of the movie. I made sure to always use the latter when I was constructing those charts

 

Even so, I don't imagine it's 100% accurate accounting for every intended search for the Disney movie Wish. It's just too broad a search word.

 

EDIT: indeed, even comparing it to an unfiltered search of "Disney wish" it still looks much smaller. Granted even that is ambiguous given there's also the Wish cruise, but I don't imagine the average bored Internet user googles that as much as a movie coming out.

 

Actually I think Google might've lumped in intended "Disney Wish" searches with the cruise topic, because that also shows a spike in April when the teaser came out.

 

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%2Fg%2F11s7vchjt5,Disney wish,%2Fg%2F11swd7l3b7&hl=en

 

 

Edited September 18, 2023 by AniNate

[MovieMan89]

Strange World failed because it’s extremely subpar by their standard and WDAS honestly haven’t made a truly subpar film since Bolt nearly 15 years ago.
 

They have a standard to uphold, if they don’t meet it, then it definitely is going to hurt the box office. WDAS (mostly) still doesn’t deal in sequels and franchises. It’s really as simple as that. It’s also the reason why I’ve been nervous about their future, because the first movie that really dips in quality following a long win streak from them usually means a long dry spell from them. 

[JWR]

 

 

[Bob Train]

26 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

Strange World failed because it’s extremely subpar by their standard and WDAS honestly haven’t made a truly subpar film since Bolt nearly 15 years ago.
 

 

Ralph Breaks the Internet.

[Morieris]

16 minutes ago, JWR said:

 

 

 

Where are these even coming from.

[Morieris]

oh a little story hint here.

[AniNate]

It's merchandise popping up on Amazon, some fan with way too much time on their hands must just be reloading a search string until they see new stuff they can report on