Big lessons from Disney’s rare failures

NEARLY everything Disney touches comes up golden at the box office. Its only major blemishes are when the studio tries to live in the squishy area in between.

Disney Animation’s Moana repeated as box-office champ over the weekend, grossing $28.3 million (R391 million) domestically, according to studio estimates. The film, which has grossed $177.3 million worldwide, gives the Mouse House its fourth animated film of the year to open at No 1, following Zootopia, Disney/Pixar’s Finding Dory and the mostly CGI-animated Jungle Book.

Moana comes right on the heels of Disney’s Doctor Strange, which continues the eight-year string of consecutive Marvel hits – including May’s Captain America: Civil War, which stands as the biggest movie of the year worldwide ($1.15 billion).

The year’s only four releases to top $900 million globally, in fact, all hail from Disney: Civil War is followed by Dory ($1.027bn), Zootopia ($1.024bn) and The Jungle Book ($966.5m), with Doctor Strange ($635m) at No 9 and rising. And Disney still has Rogue One: A Star Wars Story – which is doing high advance sales, naturally –in the holster with a December 16 release. The studio’s decisions since 2009 to buy Marvel and Lucasfilm continue to pay off.

But while Disney has already topped $6 billion worldwide this year, it did have some misses – and most of them share a common trait.

The BFG, which blends live-action performances with CG animation effects, was a major disappointment, grossing $55.4 million domestically and $178 million worldwide (on a reported $140m production budget). And the sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass bombed domestically ($77 million) and grossed $299mn worldwide – a shadow of what 2010’s Alice Through the Looking Glass ($1.025 billion) grossed.

Elsewhere the studio, Pete’s Dragon, which combined human performances with its animated dragon, performed modestly – $142 million worldwide. (This year, the studio also distributed the critically acclaimed Queen of Katwe and the middling The Finest Hours.)

The takeaway for Disney in even its greatest box-office year ever seems to be: Straight animation, plus live-action performances surrounded by animated effects, can be a big box-office draw. But once the lead characters themselves feel like human performance oddly bent by twisted CG effects, the results – no matter how dazzling – can often turn off loyal Disney audiences. – Washington Post

PICTURE: AP Disney shows characters Maui, voiced by Dwayne Johnson, right, and Moana, voiced by Auli’i Cravalho, in a scene from the animated film, Moana.

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