Big Hero 6 | November 7, 2014 | Now available on home video

[TServo2049]

I think WDAS scheduled Big Hero 6 in the early-November slot (as an "untitled" film) even before Frozen was released. Tangled released at Thanksgiving, and was dragged kicking and screaming to $200m by Memorial Day weekend drive-in double-features with Pirates 4. Ralph was released at early November and made $189m. There was no visible advantage to Thanksgiving at that point.

Thanksgiving may have been better in hindsight, I agree, but I can at least understand a possible thought process pre-Frozen. (Now, why they didn't move it to Thanksgiving AFTER the success of Frozen, I can't say.)

Still not a true blunder, like, say, scheduling The Princess and the Frog in mid-December instead of going wide on Thanksgiving...

Edited December 30, 2014 by TServo2049

[humanscrabble]

Generally, the major film studios have avoided releasing two full-length animated features over the same weekend in the same month, and this tends to be the case irrespective of whether it is summer holiday season or the November holiday season. WIR was released during the first weekend of November and RotG was released during Thanksgiving. During the summer, Pixar, DWA, and Illumination tend to release their animated movies a few weeks apart from one another. 

 

The studios probably assume that two animated movies released during the same weekend from two different studios will cannibalize each other and eat heavily into each other's revenue, resulting in a "lose-lose" scenario. 

 

Also, a Thanksgiving release isn't a "sure-fire" guarantee that BH6 would have grossed over $250 million. Frozen was a very unique cultural phenomenon that broke out in an unprecedented manner after being released over the Thanksgiving weekend, and it doesn't necessarily mean that every subsequent WDAS feature that is given a Thanksgiving release slot will be able to cruise past $250 million just because Frozen did it. Remember: Tangled was released over the Thanksgiving weekend and had to claw its way up to $200 million. 

Edited December 30, 2014 by humanscrabble

[TServo2049]

The general belief in previous posts has been, if Disney had moved BH6 to Thanksgiving, DWA would have moved to another slot (possibly the first weekend of November where BH6 actually opened).

And agreed on Tangled, I brought that up. At the time Disney scheduled BH6, there did not appear to be an inherent advantage to either slot.

Edited December 30, 2014 by TServo2049

[BadAtGender]

The point isn't that they should have put it in the T-Day slot to start, but that they should have moved it there.

 

The conventional wisdom is that the weekend before Thanksgiving is the best release date in the month. It's the Harry Potter release date, the Twilight release date. The Hunger Games release date. And for a good portion of the '00s, animated films have tried out the slot. It seemed like actually taking Thanksgiving was bad because of the second weekend drop.

 

But as Disney themselves proved in '07 with Enchanted, Thanksgiving can be a great release date. Then in '08, they grabbed the pre-Thanksgiving weekend for Bolt and ran into Twilight, which possibly can't have been predicted, but it did handicap a good portion of their target audience. Then they decided to avoid it entirely in '09 with the TPATF catastrophe. Then in '10? Thanksgiving again and success.

 

The early November slot has always felt like a bit of a consolation prize. It can generate big openings, like early May, but the distance between it and the holiday, combined with the inevitably large films that take the pre-Thanksgiving slot, mean there's a large hurdle to overcome. So you've got films like Thor 2, and Wreck-It Ralph and Big Hero 6 and even The Incredibles which did well, but perhaps not as well as they could have with a different release date.

 

(I'm not sure if Thanksgiving itself would have been better for Bolt. If there's an argument that any competition with the first Twilight would have been bad, so if there's a film that should have gone for early November, this might have been it.)

 

At this point, with pretty much anything, Disney is the big man on campus. Even if they'd given BH6 the early November slot ages ago, they could have changed it to Thanksgiving pretty much up to any point until Penguins was moved there back in May. Maybe such a move wouldn't have caused the film to earn more, but it's highly unlikely it would have earned any less.

[AniNate]

I don't see the point in gnashing teeth over it. The movie's a hit. Can't we just leave it at that?

[Avatree]

 

Actually this is pretty normal for Disney, Frozen is the exception because of its winter theme and also the lack of competition. Wreck it Ralph, Tangled and The Princess and the Frog were all released in late January/early February as was The Muppets and all did great. Big Hero 6 only faces Shaun the Sheep as competition whereas November/December it would have faced more competition

Strange, I thought Wreck-It Ralph was released in December in the UK, I remember seeing John C Reilly promoting it in December in an interview.

 

Anyway, it's all pretty weird. Films always face competition, BH6 would have been up against the same things it was in the US.

 

 

I don't see the point in gnashing teeth over it. The movie's a hit. Can't we just leave it at that?

Don't you think the point of this forum is a little undermined if we were to simply say, "It was a hit, leave it at that, don't talk anymore"?

[AniNate]

Don't you think the point of this forum is a little undermined if we were to simply say, "It was a hit, leave it at that, don't talk anymore"?

 

Save the "what-ifing" for when films actually disappoint. I'm pretty sure Disney knew exactly what they were doing when they set this for an early November release.

[Melvin Frohike]

Hindsight is 20/20, but if they'd decided to move it early enough, they wouldn't have been trying to muscle in on PoM, but instead would have been going head-to-head with Home. Even if I'm feeling a lot more anticipation for that than possibly anyone else around, I don't think DWA would have left it up in a direct competition.

All true, but regarding the hindsight aspect, there were many who felt--months before the movie was released--that Disney should have moved Big Hero 6 to Thanksgiving. Yes, they've had success with both release periods, but Thanksgiving (or a bit later), despite the characteristic large drop of the second weekend, is believed to help with a movie's legs, in regard to movies that rely more on legs, which is typical of "family" and animated movies.

Admittedly this doesn't always work out, but there is a potential for the movie to really clean up during the holiday season and position itself well for late legs. In hindsight this actually happened this time with Big Hero 6, but with significantly smaller numbers because it was released three weeks earlier.

 

The PoM/Home switch still would have happened, but they'd have dropped PoM into the early November slot. It probably would have done better, too.

I agree--my guess is that both movies would have benefited from swapping their release dates.

 

 

Wonderful! Amazing! Crazy! Surprising! Encouraging!   I'm so glad BH6 is successful, and I can't wait to watch it in France in 6 weeks

God, I hope that the movie meets your expectations!

 

 

same here in Korea. don't understand why the release schedules are all so over the place worldwide.

like would it be benefited from it or hurt?

I think that with some exceptions the situation in each market is assessed independently. Given how "small" the world has become due to how we communicate these days, perhaps a more global view should be taken, however I haven't noticed a general trend of markets that get a movie late resulting in disappointing grosses. That certainly didn't happen with Frozen in Japan last year, for example. And even if the global view is being considered, which could be the case, it would be by those who know each individual market and whether a movie's box office gross would be impacted by a late release in that market.

 

really hope this could do $650M+ WW.. but not looking promising.

To me it looks promising so far with Big Hero 6 outperforming recent WDAS animated features in many markets (that are not named Frozen, although it has outperformed even this movie in a number of markets, as well). With most of the biggest markets still left (and Japan just getting started), I think that BH6 still has a chance to reach such heights.

 

 

I don't see the point in gnashing teeth over it. The movie's a hit. Can't we just leave it at that?

Do you happen to know of any good forums where people can discuss the box office in detail?

 

 

Save the "what-ifing" for when films actually disappoint.

That it could--and perhaps should--have done better sounds like disappointment to me. It's not disappointing in the big picture, but in terms of predictions and expectations its DOM performance has been somewhat lackluster. Both perspectives are valid and can coexist.

 

I'm pretty sure Disney knew exactly what they were doing when they set this for an early November release.

Disney are far from infallible, especially, it seems, when it comes to their animated features. The lack of faith that Disney's marketers (not WDAS--they just make the movies) had in Frozen last year was a pretty good example.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Melvin Frohike

[Fullbuster]

 

 

God, I hope that the movie meets your expectations!

 

 

 

Ahaha I hope too but I'm not worried about that, I'm sure I'll love it

[humanscrabble]

I fail to see how BH6's domestic performance is "somewhat lackluster", especially when compared with Tangled's, WIR's, HTTYD 2's, and the much hyped about Interstellar's domestic performances. Maybe it's just me, but I was hoping BH6 would gross more than $200 million domestically, and thus far it has met and will exceed my expectations...

Edited December 30, 2014 by humanscrabble

[BadAtGender]

I fail to see how BH6's domestic performance is "somewhat lackluster", especially when compared with Tangled's, WIR's, HTTYD 2's, and the much hyped about Interstellar's domestic performances. Maybe it's just me, but I was hoping BH6 would gross more than $200 million domestically, and thus far it has met and will exceed my expectations...

 

It's not that BH6 has done poorly. It hasn't. It's more that it had potential to be bigger.

 

What I think happened here is that Disney has an idea that Thanksgiving is better for girl movies and early November better for boy movies. So Frozen, Tangled, and Moana get Thanksgiving, while Wreck-It Ralph and BH6 get early Nov. It seems to ignore the relative strength or weakness of the release date.

[Avatree]

I fail to see how BH6's domestic performance is "somewhat lackluster", especially when compared with Tangled's, WIR's, HTTYD 2's, and the much hyped about Interstellar's domestic performances. Maybe it's just me, but I was hoping BH6 would gross more than $200 million domestically, and thus far it has met and will exceed my expectations...

Yeah, if it ends with around 215M, I think it's done pretty well. I think the issue is a more general one - this year has been pretty void of huge hits, and every film that is big rather than huge reinforces that idea.

 

And, of course, this is getting compared to Frozen, which is crazy.

[Jonwo]

 

 

Strange, I thought Wreck-It Ralph was released in December in the UK, I remember seeing John C Reilly promoting it in December in an interview.

 

Anyway, it's all pretty weird. Films always face competition, BH6 would have been up against the same things it was in the US.

 

 

It's more about maximising the potential money that the film will make, releasing it in late January means they can take advantage of half term and the competition is nowhere near as tough. Disney knows what they doing and it's a strategy that works for them and other studios do it too like DWA which released Madagascar 3 and Turbo in October and both did good. 

 

 

I fail to see how BH6's domestic performance is "somewhat lackluster", especially when compared with Tangled's, WIR's, HTTYD 2's, and the much hyped about Interstellar's domestic performances. Maybe it's just me, but I was hoping BH6 would gross more than $200 million domestically, and thus far it has met and will exceed my expectations...

 

The other animated film to have broken $200m was The Lego Movie and that had no competition for almost a month. It's a success and WDAS will be very happy with how it's done so far,

[Avatree]

It's more about maximising the potential money that the film will make, releasing it in late January means they can take advantage of half term and the competition is nowhere near as tough. Disney knows what they doing and it's a strategy that works for them and other studios do it too like DWA which released Madagascar 3 and Turbo in October and both did good. 

 

 

 

The other animated film to have broken $200m was The Lego Movie and that had no competition for almost a month. It's a success and WDAS will be very happy with how it's done so far,

Your half-term argument makes no sense. Its US release date was one week after half-term - if they wanted to utilise that, then surely it would make more sense to release it a week and a half early in the UK, rather than 3 months later.

 

I don't get the competition thing either. There was no more competition in the UK in November than there was in the US, and there's no less in February than there is in the US either (there's actually more, thanks to our friend Shaun).

 

I also completely disagree that we should just trust that Disney knows best and is immune to criticism. That's just silly.

[Jonwo]

Your half-term argument makes no sense. Its US release date was one week after half-term - if they wanted to utilise that, then surely it would make more sense to release it a week and a half early in the UK, rather than 3 months later.

 

I don't get the competition thing either. There was no more competition in the UK in November than there was in the US, and there's no less in February than there is in the US either (there's actually more, thanks to our friend Shaun).

 

I also completely disagree that we should just trust that Disney knows best and is immune to criticism. That's just silly.

 

October Half Term would have meant it would had to compete with TMNT and to a lesser extent Book of Life plus Disney already had a family film scheduled. Incidentally, TMNT didn't release day and date with the US and probably benefitted from the lack of similar competition. 

 

Shaun the Sheep will do well but it's not Wallace and Gromit in terms of popularity plus it's not in 3D which TMNT was which was likely another deciding factor.

[mahnamahna]

Yeah, if it ends with around 215M, I think it's done pretty well. I think the issue is a more general one - this year has been pretty void of huge hits, and every film that is big rather than huge reinforces that idea.

 

And, of course, this is getting compared to Frozen, which is crazy.

I think next year will rebound

1. Furious 7
2. Avengers 2
3. Jurassic World
4. Inside Out
5. Minions
6. Ant-Man
7. Spectre
8. Mockingjay Part 2
9. The Good Dinosaur
10. Star Wars - The Force Awakens

Plenty of potential blockbusters there. Unlike January 2014, where only HTTYD2 and Mockingjay Part 1 appeared to be surefire hits

[Fullbuster]

Next year we'll celebrate the return of Pixar, I have a very good feeling about Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur

[TalismanRing]

Yeah, if it ends with around 215M, I think it's done pretty well. I think the issue is a more general one - this year has been pretty void of huge hits, and every film that is big rather than huge reinforces that idea.

 

And, of course, this is getting compared to Frozen, which is crazy.

 

It's going to be around $210m after this w/e so a $225-$230m total looks more probable.

[Melvin Frohike]

I fail to see how BH6's domestic performance is "somewhat lackluster", especially when compared with Tangled's, WIR's, HTTYD 2's,

As I've said, it depends on the perspective being used. From the general perspective, Big Hero 6 is performing very well and is a big success, especially in light of how movies--particularly family/animated movies--have been doing lately. Disney should be happy with its performance, and that's how I feel about it, too, from this perspective.

On the other hand, like many others I thought it could and would do better. It's less of an expectation and more of a hope, but even so from this perspective I'm a bit disappointed that it didn't break out beyond the more "realistic" expectations. With WDAS, Disney in general, and superhero movies being so hot--and with some such movies having exceeded expectations this summer--I thought that Big Hero 6 was in a good position to gross more like what Pixar movies typically gross, but unfortunately that didn't happen, and likely won't unless the movie's spectacular holiday performance carries over with really strong late legs (something to watch for).

Regarding the latter, I just made a big deal about it in this thread because otherwise there has been so little to talk about regarding BH6's DOM box office run (we were talking more about foreign grosses even here). If it hadn't been lackluster in some way, then there would have been more excitement and activity in this thread.

Again, I'm not saying that BH6 hasn't been doing well. It certainly has, and in that sense is definitely not a disappointment, but meeting the most "realistic" expectations is kind of boring. If it weren't, then this thread would have had a lot more pages by now, I bet.

 

and the much hyped about Interstellar's domestic performances.

I'll take boring over lamenting over what went wrong, but even with a successful run, we can still talk about how it might have been better (unprovable though that may be).

 

Maybe it's just me, but I was hoping BH6 would gross more than $200 million domestically, and thus far it has met and will exceed my expectations...

It all comes down to expectations and perspective. For many of us, not underperforming is more of a consolation prize than something to get excited about.

 

 

And, of course, this is getting compared to Frozen, which is crazy.

I haven't seen anybody here set such a lofty standard--in fact we've talked at length about avoiding it--although many seem to expect BH6 to get a boost from Frozen. The latter is something I had hoped for myself, but lately I've been thinking that the opposite, if anything, may be true.

Now, Moana, apparently being a princess musical, is the WDAS movie that I think many are setting unrealistic expectations for, especially this early on.

 

 

It's more about maximising the potential money that the film will make, releasing it in late January means they can take advantage of half term and the competition is nowhere near as tough. Disney knows what they doing and it's a strategy that works for them and other studios do it too like DWA which released Madagascar 3 and Turbo in October and both did good.

Uh...Turbo did well?! It grossed only $83M DOM and $283M WW with a $135M budget--it was a money-losing flop that I'm sure DWA had way higher expectations for.

 

 

The other animated film to have broken $200m was The Lego Movie and that had no competition for almost a month. It's a success and WDAS will be very happy with how it's done so far,

And Big Hero 6 had a lot more competition than Wreck-It Ralph did in late December, but still performed MUCH better than the latter, and relatively speaking much better than itself before the additional competition came along (i.e. I doubt that the competition has hurt it). Meanwhile, HTTYD 2 had no real competition (and is actually a good DWA movie ) but underperformed in the DOM market (OS made up for it and then some, but its DOM gross was weak)--even in comparison to "realistic" expectations--anyway (i.e. the lack of competition in no way implies success).

[CelestialFairyIX]

I'm hoping Big Hero 6 get's nominated for an Oscar.  However, the chances of it winning are not in its favor as How to Train Your Dragon 2, LEGO Movie, and The Tale of Princess Kaguya are all big contenders and each movie has been praised immensely by critics, the latter even being one of the most acclaimed animated film in a long time.  

 

Top Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature (Predictions):

 

~ LEGO Movie

~ How To Train Your Dragon 2

~ Big Hero 6

~ The Tale of Princess Kaguya (winner)  

~ ???

 

I'm sure the LEGO Movie will win the Oscar over The Tale of Princess Kaguya but I'm also certain both Big Hero 6 and How To Train Your Dragon 2 will give both movies a run for their money.  To me, this year was a very poor year for animated features box-office wise, probably because everyone's trying to recover from the Frozen Fever (lol) but that does not disregard the fact that many of the animated features released this year were some of the best in terms of substance in my opinion.