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

[AniNate]

All right, in that case you're correct. 

 

I'm sure Disney's pretty happy with the way it's performing. It was never going to be another Frozen, and it is continuing an upward trend for their boy-centered work.

[MovieMan89]

You're not alone in that here, but for some perspective here are the required OW multipliers for various potential total DOM grosses:

$200M: 3.56 (in the bag, barring some unforeseeable disaster)

$225M: 4.00 (definitely doable, even likely)

$250M: 4.45 (still doable with strong WOM)

$275M: 4.89 (difficult at best--would need to approach HTTYD's fantastic legs with a bigger OW)

$300M: 5.34 (extremely unlikely for a movie with this OW gross and pre-release exposure)

$325M: 5.78 (approaching Frozen's legs--would have to become a phenomenon)

$350M: 6.23 (would have to take the country by storm, as it were, much like Frozen did)

As for when to expect WOM and legs to start to kick in, I wouldn't get too excited just yet (like some people are in the Tuesday thread). For example, Frozen's legs didn't start to kick in noticeably until the Monday after its second weekend, at the earliest, and didn't really start to take off until after its third weekend. As I recall, for a couple of weeks there, at least, people were actually talking about how it would probably gradually lose its lead over Tangled and regress to a final DOM gross of $200M at the most, despite opening much bigger (i.e. a zero sum between OW gross and OW multiplier, which is practically a worst-case scenario). I don't know how anybody could have thought this given Frozen's WOM, but that seemed to be the prevailing line of thought in a number of forums nevertheless.

So don't jump the gun with Big Hero 6 in this regard, at least based on the daily numbers--not quite yet. It has done very well over the past couple of days, but Tuesday was a national holiday in the DOM market (in both the US and Canada), so that was a big reason. I expect Big Hero 6 to have above-average and maybe even great legs, but we likely won't start to see this reflected in its box office numbers for a while.

Frozen's multi isn't comparable though since it opened on Wednesday. Had it opened on Friday we can assume it would have pulled at least 80m given it had a 94m 5 day opening and its multi would [probably be more around 4.8-5x. But we can't know that for sure of course, hence why we can't compare its multi with BH6's.

 

Anyways, 4.5-ish is the best I can see it doing with all the competition. Again, the odds are really stacked against a multi much over 4x with 4 relatively big/appealing family movies to compete with over the Holiday season. Frozen's multi would have been affected too, it's just impossible for that many movies with the same target audience to not eat into each other somewhat (assuming they're at least half ways appealing like this year). Although the ones with the best WOM should be affected the least, and that will hopefully be BH6.

Edited November 13, 2014 by MovieMan89

[Dingdong123]

The lead of Big Hero 6 over Wreck-it Ralph is growing very fast! Now at 15M compared to the weekend's 7M lead!

[kowhite]

My probably 240m estimate is looking good.

No I never posted it here, if you don't believe me, then...blah.

[lab276]

I just don't see how it's going to better MI's multi.

[Melvin Frohike]

Frozen's multi isn't comparable though since it opened on Wednesday. Had it opened on Friday we can assume it would have pulled at least 80m given it had a 94m 5 day opening and its multi would [probably be more around 4.8-5x. But we can't know that for sure of course, hence why we can't compare its multi with BH6's.

I realized that (same goes for Tangled and maybe some others), but OW multipliers are not directly comparable anyway because they're not independent of the OW gross. I pointed out the latter, and now you've pointed out another caveat. The reason I just went with the numbers is because Frozen opened so much bigger than Big Hero 6 (even only counting Friday-Sunday) that 5-ish might well be 6-ish in a normalized comparison (if it were the opposite, then I would have been forced to complicate things). My goal was only to roughly characterize Big Hero 6's odds of reaching certain potential grosses, not to make a mathematically complete or precise analysis.

But in any case, the idea that you brought up is true enough.

 

Anyways, 4.5-ish is the best I can see it doing with all the competition. Again, the odds are really stacked against a multi much over 4x with 4 relatively big/appealing family movies to compete with over the Holiday season. Frozen's multi would have been affected too, it's just impossible for that many movies with the same target audience to not eat into each other somewhat (assuming they're at least half ways appealing like this year).

Well, as you said yourself (quoted below) some movies are less subject to such cannibalization than others. One thing I've noticed over time is that when the market gets crowded or for whatever reasons money gets tight, people tend to stick with the clear #1. To take a parallel example, when the economic downturn hit around 2008, observers of the theme park industry correctly predicted that this industry would be hit pretty hard, and many had argued that Disney would be the hardest hit because the public would be scrambling for less expensive alternatives. As it turned out, however, Disney was, comparatively speaking, practically spared while every other major player took the hit. The public reduced their overall spending, alright, but they saved their pennies to stick with the dominant player, even though it costs more (and movie tickets all cost the same, for all intents and purposes, so this isn't even a factor in the topic at hand--the public can go with #1 without even paying more).

This is why I shake my head whenever somebody says that Frozen was spared from competition--there might have been some tiny impact, I suppose, but it's more like the competition was spared from Frozen. Some have even gone as far as to suggest or imply that the main reason Frozen got so big was the lack of competition, and then many more used this as a reason for their belief that HTTYD 2 would become the next animated box office juggernaut (had no direct competition, either), but the reality didn't exactly work out that way for the latter. Now, unless it proves otherwise, Big Hero 6 is not another Frozen, so it probably will be impacted more by competition than Frozen would have been, but it is from Disney, the major player in the field of family movies this season, and the movie will have some time to build up strong WOM and legs (if those are in the cards at all), so I think it will do fine (in terms of circumstances at the very least). The only way it will have ever made anywhere close to $300 million is if the public will go nuts for it, in which case it would suffer less and its competition would suffer even more.

 

Although the ones with the best WOM should be affected the least, and that will hopefully be BH6.

That's right, and I hope so, too. And if WOM leads to much hype among the GA in the way that it did with Frozen (or some degree thereof), then becoming "big" in this sense is another very important factor in itself. I point this out because a movie can have excellent WOM without becoming a must-see for the mass market, and it's the must-see movies that are virtually immune to competition--if you could only pick one, then this would be it for most everybody, much like it was for Disney parks during the Great Recession and would definitely have been for Frozen if it had had more direct competition.

Edited November 13, 2014 by Melvin Frohike

[Jonwo]

Well, as you said yourself some movies are less subject to such cannibalization than others. One thing I've noticed over time is that when the market gets crowded or for whatever reasons money gets tight, people tend to stick with the clear #1. To take a parallel example, when the economic downturn hit around 2008, observers of the theme park industry correctly predicted that this industry would be hit pretty hard, and many had argued that Disney would be the hardest hit because the public would be scrambling for less expensive alternatives. As it turned out, however, Disney was, comparatively speaking, practically spared while every other major player took the hit. The public reduced their overall spending, alright, but they saved their pennies to stick with the dominant player, even though it costs more (and movie tickets all cost the same, for all intents and purposes, so this isn't even a factor in the topic at hand--the public can go with #1 without even paying more).

 

 

Often entertainment like theme parks or the theatre usually do well in recessions because people may cut their spending elsewhere, they do save up for that treat that give them escapism. Looking at shows like The Lion King, Wicked and more recently Aladdin, people are willing to pay big bucks to see these shows and the same applies to the theme parks.

[Melvin Frohike]

Often entertainment like theme parks or the theatre usually do well in recessions because people may cut their spending elsewhere, they do save up for that treat that give them escapism. Looking at shows like The Lion King, Wicked and more recently Aladdin, people are willing to pay big bucks to see these shows and the same applies to the theme parks.

The industry still took a hit compared to what would have been (sometimes doing well means surviving without closing your parks in this business, which is lower-margin than most people realize), and my point was that Disney suffered the least by far, contrary to what some were predicting at the time. Those who attended Disney parks as well as other amusement/theme parks attended the others less than before for a time, while Disney made out much better and even invested and expanded during this period, despite being the most expensive option. Living in Southern California, I saw this effect directly myself--people gave up Knott's Berry Farm, SeaWorld, Magic Mountain, etc. first to cut back on spending, while very few were willing to give up Disneyland.

This is how dominant Disney is in that industry. They don't have such dominance in the movie business, but with a movie like Frozen they did regarding animated features late last year, and would have regardless of the competition. When a heavily-hyped (mostly by WOM in this case) movie becomes a must-see movie, people are going to see it whether any direct competition is playing or not, and generally it is the latter that will suffer when decisions must be made. Even excellent WOM alone does not make a movie a must-see, and even the most flaming-hot hype is not enough on its own (e.g. Interstellar )--it's a combination of the two and whatever other "secret sauce" that is required to make a must-see movie, and my argument is that among animated features, Frozen was such a movie.

If Big Hero 6, which sure seems to have great WOM, can achieve even a fraction of what Frozen did in terms of organic GA hype, then it shouldn't be hurt that much by the competition. Those rooting for the movie can only hope at this point (just a fraction would help a lot).

[Sal]

So we did an educational event at a school on Thursday, teaching kids the basics of how to make comics.  A lot of the kids are massively into superhero movies, at least at this school.  We got asked a lot of questions about superheroes.

 

There were a few questions about BH6 (Baymax in particular) and a few kids were saying they hadn't seen the movie but wanted to  I was surprised at how many of the girls were asking... more even than the boys.  Here's hoping the enthusiasm holds up!

[Chinoiserie]

So we did an educational event at a school on Thursday, teaching kids the basics of how to make comics.  A lot of the kids are massively into superhero movies, at least at this school.  We got asked a lot of questions about superheroes.

 

There were a few questions about BH6 (Baymax in particular) and a few kids were saying they hadn't seen the movie but wanted to  I was surprised at how many of the girls were asking... more even than the boys.  Here's hoping the enthusiasm holds up!

 

Girls usually are bigger Disney fans than boys, that is why they always try to make more boy-friendly stuff since they know the girls will show up anyway. It makes sense but is annoying for female fans. 

[Sal]

Girls usually are bigger Disney fans than boys, that is why they always try to make more boy-friendly stuff since they know the girls will show up anyway. It makes sense but is annoying for female fans. 

 

If the girls enjoy the 'boys' movies then why is it annoying?  I imagine it'd be more annoying if they only assumed girls will see pink princess movies.  Girls have varied tastes too, y'know.  My GF is into more comic stuff than I am.

[Melvin Frohike]

If the girls enjoy the 'boys' movies then why is it annoying?  I imagine it'd be more annoying if they only assumed girls will see pink princess movies.  Girls have varied tastes too, y'know.  My GF is into more comic stuff than I am.

I get what you're basically saying and agree, but what's "pink" about Disney's princess movies? Just a bit of hypothetical rhetoric?

[AniNate]

It's easier to get girls to see boys' movies than boys to see girls' movies.

[Jonwo]

Disney has the girl market cornered with their films like Frozen and Tangled plus DTVs like Tinkerbell and also Disney Channel which is aimed mostly at girs aged 11-14 but boys are much harder to get and Disney have traditionally lost to CN and Nickelodeon when it came to that demo, I suspect acquiring Pixar, Lucasfilm and Marvel as well as releasing films like Pirates, Tron etc were a way of capturing that demo as well as rebranding Toon Disney as Disney XD.

Edited November 15, 2014 by Jonwo

[Sal]

I get what you're basically saying and agree, but what's "pink" about Disney's princess movies? Just a bit of hypothetical rhetoric?

 

Common colour in princess dresses.  See: Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Maid Marian, Ariel (in one scene) and others as well.  

 

Also, in a lot of Disney promotional art, they put the princesses in pink dresses whether they wore them canonically or not, thus reinforcing the "princess=pink" thing.

 

For example:

 

And also enforcing the "girls should like pink" thing.  There was an article making the rounds about a little girl who was asking why the boy's toys got to be in all kinds of colours but the girls' toys are mostly pink.

 

It works in the inverse too.  I've seen at least two instances IRL where a parent would make their little boy put a pink coloured toy (or in one case, sunglasses) down because "those are for girls".

[Melvin Frohike]

Common colour in princess dresses.  See: Sleeping Beauty,

Not most of the time.

 

Rapunzel,

Doesn't she wear purple?

 

Maid Marian, Ariel (in one scene) and others as well.

It happens sometimes as pink is a color like any other, but I'd hardly call these movies "pink princess movies"--maybe the Barbie princess movies deserve to be called that, but not the WDAS ones.

 

 

Also, in a lot of Disney promotional art, they put the princesses in pink dresses whether they wore them canonically or not, thus reinforcing the "princess=pink" thing.

 

For example:

Egad! I was just thinking about the movies themselves, though, not the merchandise or pathetic promotion thereof. Looking at this picture, honestly I hadn't realized how much of a gender ghetto Disney had created for themselves in terms of image, but my point is that WDAS doesn't do that. If what you said was just rhetoric that references Disney's self-inflicted ultra-girly image, due to their merchandise, then fine, but the movies themselves are nothing of the sort.

Edited November 15, 2014 by Melvin Frohike

[kayumanggi]

It's easier to get girls to see boys' movies than boys to see girls' movies.

 

True. Do you think boys will see INSIDE OUT?

[Mojoguy]

Will BH6's second weekend be over or under WIR's second weekend?

[AniNate]

True. Do you think boys will see INSIDE OUT?

 

They'd be more inclined to than Frozen, but it really depends on how they market it. If they play up the antics of the emotions as a group (esp. Anger) I'm sure they would be, but if marketing focuses on the "girly" issues Riley faces it might be a turn-off.

 

That sounds horribly sexist, I know. Society really frustrates me sometimes.

Edited November 15, 2014 by tribefan695

[Sal]

Not most of the time.

 

Doesn't she wear purple?

 

It happens sometimes as pink is a color like any other, but I'd hardly call these movies "pink princess movies"--maybe the Barbie princess movies deserve to be called that, but not the WDAS ones.

 

 

Egad! I was just thinking about the movies themselves, though, not the merchandise or pathetic promotion thereof. Looking at this picture, honestly I hadn't realized how much of a gender ghetto Disney had created for themselves in terms of image, but my point is that WDAS doesn't do that. If what you said was just rhetoric that references Disney's self-inflicted ultra-girly image, due to their merchandise, then fine, but the movies themselves are nothing of the sort.

 

The thing is... how they merchandise something has an effect on how it's seen and perceived by its audience.  If a little girl gets a Disney Princess doll clad in pink, then is it really going to matter that the original wore purple or blue?  If all of the posters and ads show the princesses in pink, how long does it take to internalize that view of princesses=pink.  I know we want to regard marketing/merchandising and the actual movies as different things, but for the kids the two kind of meld together.

 

And you should know that I really enjoy most of the princess movies and I don't view them personally as 'pink princess' movies, but looking at the toys and other things that come with them, I think it's impossible to say that they aren't making the connection (in one way or the other) that pink=for girls and that girls should like pink things.

 

Which really sucks in general because Princess movies are good for both genders and same with non-princess movies like BH6.

 

Edit: also I think you're right about Rapunzel's dress, but I'm colourblind so it's hard to tell.

Edited November 15, 2014 by Sal