Poor ‘Lightyear’ Box Office Highlights Disney’s Increasing Reliance On Marvel

Pixar’s Lightyear took a seismic drop during its second weekend of release, falling 65% (behind, among Pixar plunges, only Onward’s 73% drop the weekend Covid shut down the entire world) and ending its tenth day with just $89 million domestic. The $200 million Disney/Pixar flick has earned $152 million worldwide, with conventional trajectories (give or take an extreme overperformance in Japan when the time comes) pointing toward a domestic finish of over/under The Good Dinosaur’s $127 million cume and a global finish closer to Encanto ($255 million) and Cars 3 ($388 million). That Sing 2 grossed $407 million in 2021/2022 implies that we can’t just point to Covid. Strong business for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ($947 million) and Jurassic World Dominion ($750 million-and-counting) implies that the rightwing backlash was mostly contained within the online echo chamber since both tentpoles had prominent lesbian co-lead or supporting characters. The blame fault lies with Lightyear itself and further points toward a macro-Disney problem that has been lurking in the shadows since 2018.

Lightyear bombed because of Lightyear.

While Lightyear was a visually engrossing and relatively thoughtful sci-fi adventure that played more like The Black Hole than a sci-fi swashbuckler, the core concept was a repeat of what went wrong with Solo: A Star Wars Story. The theoretical Phil Lord/Chris Miller-directed version notwithstanding, the final Ron Howard-directed heist caper was both a mostly enjoyable outer-space western and entirely inessential to most moviegoers. It was “just a movie” right as audiences were getting most of their “just a movie” fill from VOD and streaming and spending more of their theatrical dollars on “event movies” like Avengers: Infinity War, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Bohemian Rhapsody. It was an unrequested prequel origin story spinning off a franchise’s co-lead into his stand-alone movie while swapping out the actor most associated with the role with a younger performer. Moreover, if audiences didn’t care about the abstract notion of a Buzz Lightyear movie, the film has nothing else to offer. It wasn’t the rightwing backlash, and it was only partially about conditioning Disney fans to wait until Disney+.

Disney is increasingly reliant on MCU superheroes.

Okay, fine, Disney swung and missed, so what, right? Well, this isn’t quite 2015 when they can strike out with The Good Dinosaur and Tomorrowland and still be drowning in money thanks to Avengers: Age of Ultron, Inside Out and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Here’s a scary stat that long precedes Covid: Disney earned $7.038 billion globally in 2018, but $5.262 billion of that (75%) came from three MCU movies (Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp) along with a Pixar superhero sequel (Incredibles 2). Save for Ralph Breaks the Internet ($520 million), the rest of the slate including Solo ($394 million), A Wrinkle in Time ($133 million) and Mary Poppins Returns ($350 million) underperformed or outright flopped. Even four years ago, Disney’s theatrical dominance was becoming almost entirely predicated on the MCU. While Beauty and the Beast earned $1.263 billion in 2017 and the one-two punch of Aladdin ($1.053 billion) and The Lion King ($1.641 billion) scored in 2019, that treasure chest may be near-empty.

The “live-action remake” well is quickly running dry.

Save for Alice in Wonderland ($1.025 billion) which kicked off Disney’s “live-action fairy tale extension of a popular Disney cartoon” sub-genre, most of the very biggest such flicks have been from the Jeffrey Katzenberg/Waking Sleeping Beauty era. Just because audiences flocked to Aladdin doesn’t mean they flocked to Dumbo ($350 million). However, save for The Little Mermaid and maybe Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs opening over the next few years, Disney has essentially run out of A-level Disney toons for which to give the live-action treatment. I love The Great Mouse Detective, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Emperor’s New Groove, but I won’t pretend that spending theatrical money on live-action remakes of those pictures is going to yield even Cinderella-level ($515 million in 2015) grosses. So, if the live-action remake train is slowing down, along with the likes of Pinocchio and (probably) Lilo & Stitch (understandably) heading to Disney+ instead of theaters, what else is left? Is it too soon to make live-action versions of The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, Frozen and Moana?

Disney has failed to make new live-action theatrical franchises.

Bob Iger’s reign from 2005 to 2020 was a near-unmitigated success that reshaped pop culture as we know it in ways good (more inclusive mega-bucks tentpole casting) and bad (an eventual reliance on nostalgia-skewing IP). However, his tenure as Disney’s CEO was one of acquisition, namely Pixar in 2006, Marvel in 2009, Lucasfilm in 2012 and Fox in 2019. In terms of theatrical blockbusters, Disney hasn’t had a “new to theaters” live-action franchise outside of the existing MCU brands since Pirates of the Caribbean in 2003 and National Treasure in 2004. To be fair, Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt’s Jungle Cruise might have earned Pirates 1-level money ($654 million) in non-Covid times, and Ryan Reynolds’ original Free Guy earned $330 million last summer on an over/under $115 million budget. However, even if Free Guy spawns a sequel, and Reynolds’ Guy and Jodie Comer’s Molotov Girl just might be marquee characters, that was a project picked up from 20th Century Studios. Likewise, Fox was only theatrically useful for a few existing IP (Avatar, Planet of the Apes, Deadpool, etc.).

Can Disney’s animated films still rule the box office?

Onward opened poorly ($39 million) before Covid and Raya and the Last Dragon (which debuted in theaters and via Disney+ Premier Access for an extra $30) earned about as much ($133 million worldwide) as Tom & Jerry ($130 million despite being on HBO Max in North America for the first month) and Paw Patrol ($144 million despite being in theaters and on Paramount concurrently). We’ll never know how Luca would have performed theatrically in summer 2021, nor Turning Red in April of 2022, but Encanto earned $255 million amid an exclusive 31-day theatrical window only to earn far larger viewership on Disney+ than the “straight to streaming” Turning Red and Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers. Meanwhile, Illumination’s Sing 2 earned $407 million while DreamWorks’ The Bad Guys earned $235 million despite both Universal titles being available on PVOD concurrently for almost their entire theatrical run. What if the last two years of emphasizing Disney+ has taught subscribers to wait for almost any non-MCU Disney flick until it arrives on streaming in as little as six weeks?

Disney’s theatrical domination is mostly dependent on the MCU.

With the live-action remake mill having arguably peaked in 2019, Star Wars mostly confined to streaming, a long-existing struggle to create new-to-cinema live-action franchises and now even Disney’s prized animation brands struggling after two years of Covid-centric and/or Disney+ > theaters complications, what’s left for the Mouse House? Well, that essentially leaves the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Disney’s last A++ theatrical brand. To be fair, Marvel has two years of likely-to-be-huge MCU sequels on the horizon. Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and The Marvels will open between this July and next July, and I’m guessing more buzzy titles (Fantastic Four, Blade, maybe some kind of team-up event, etc.) will be announced at this year’s SDCC presentation. However, in a world where Ant-Man and the Wasp “only” grossed $620 million in 2018, Disney better hope that the $380-$430 million grosses for Black Widow, Shang-Chi and Eternals were more about Covid than a ceiling for new MCU franchises.

Are Marvel, Star Wars and Avatar enough?

Walt Disney Animation’s Strange World could break out this Thanksgiving while Pixar’s Elementals plays big enough next June. Even if theatrical releases for Disney toons are now viewed as a glorified Disney+ advertising campaign, a few MCU movies, an Avatar and/or a Lucasfilm flick, plus a live-action remake or two plus a theme park adaptations like Tower of Terror or The Haunted Mansion qualifies as a viable theatrical slate (along with revenue from Disney+, ESPN, amusement parks and cruise ships). Even with 2020 being a down year, we might have expected Black Widow, Eternals, Mulan, Jungle Cruise, Soul, Raya and the Last Dragon and Free Guy to top $6 billion global. Willfully discarding a distribution avenue that brought Disney $12 billion in global revenue in 2019 strikes me as madness. If Disney toons and most non-MCU Disney releases no longer bring comparative theatrical earnings, well, that’s a lot of concessions not being sold to families. A lack of comparative theatrical may be a bigger problem for theaters than for Disney.

A problem to be solved or a new normal?

After Bob Iger’s presumed retirement party included releasing huge Aladdin, The Lion King, Toy Story 4, Frozen II, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame, 2020 was supposed to be the year everyone else fought back with Wonder Woman 1984, Top Gun: Maverick, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, No Time to Die and F9. There’s an enormous difference between “Disney is now on even ground with the rest of the industry” versus Disney arguably struggling save for Marvel movies and Fox leftovers (Free Guy, presumably Avatar: The Way of Water). I still say that the impressive post-theatrical streaming viewership for Sonic the Hedgehog 2, The Batman and Encanto argue for theatrical distribution as a central entertainment focus. But if Bob Chapek is comfortable living and dying by Wall Street’s perceptions of Disney+ subscriptions, the question is whether the rest of Hollywood (who all have their streaming > theatrical sins) can make up the Mouse House difference or whether Disney can get its non-Marvel groove back. As always, we’ll see.