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Disney had a rough weekend at the box office. Their latest animated film Wish dropped to third place behind Napoleon and the Hunger Games prequel. Wish was only predicted to do modestly well over the holiday weekend but was still expected to come in first.
“Wish,” the studio’s newest animated adventure, was projected to land on top of box office charts over the Thanksgiving holiday. Instead, ticket sales fell short of expectations with a weak $19.5 million over the traditional weekend and $31.7 million over the five days, and the film tumbled to third place behind Lionsgate’s “The Hunger Games” prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and Ridley Scott’s historical epic “Napoleon.”
Heading into the weekend, the musical fable “Wish” was projected to earn $35 million over the traditional weekend and $45 million to $50 million in its first five days of release…
“Wish” also added $17.3 million at the international box office, opening in just 27 markets (about 40% of its eventual overseas footprint), bringing its global tally to $49 million. The film’s anemic initial turnout further illuminates that magic has been in short supply at Disney, a once untouchable force at the box office. Most of the studio’s 2023 slate, excluding “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” has dramatically underperformed in their theatrical runs.
This was a $200 million animated film and worldwide it has only made about $50 million on a five day opening weekend. That’s bad news because a) Disney only gets a portion of the $50 million, the rest of which goes to theaters and b) the $200 million production budget does not include the cost of advertising and promotion which was probably another $50 million. In short, the only chance this movie has of breaking even is that it has a long run which picks up business over Christmas.
But it probably doesn’t help that reviewers were not very kind to Wish.
