Written by steet :
* UPDATED * See below!
The Princess And The Frog is now available widely (in the US!) and here's its first week end box office :
$24,208,916
My analysis? Disappointing. VERY disappointing.
This is below the expectations, below any 3D animated film being released over the past years. UP made 3 times that, other lesser efforts such as Cloudy With a Chance of Meatball or Disney's A Christmas Carol made much better.
Enchanted, a film with similar aspects but limited target, made 35M$. Heck, even Curious George, a 2D animated film that no one talked about when it was released in 2006 and which had very little marketing, made 15M$ on its opening! And don't forget the other big recent 2D animated film, The Simpsons Movie, which made...74M$!
And I'm not sure this will get better : the film will unfortunately stand no chance against the blockbuster Avatar and the sequel to Alvin next week end.
The strangest thing? Everyone news reporter seems to take this box office as a good news... As if they expected even worse.
That being said : I'm not too worried about the fate of 2D at Disney. (at least on the movie side) The Princess & The Frog did not "boom", for now it's making almost as much as Bolt or Meet the Robinsons. Now that they've reopened their 2D department, they won't give up on it immediately. Also, much befenits from the films come from merchandise, and I still have hope for big DVD sales too.
Also, the film itself is very, very good and up to the level of their 90's animated films : just take a look at all the reviews, including here. Even if it doesn't meet the deserved success, I think this is a film we'll still remember as a cult classic in several decades, when no one will know if Cloudy With a Chance of Meatball was really a movie.
But one sure thing : no other company will venture into making 2D animated films when they see such results. And with the Direct-To-Video sequels trend being officially dead, that means : no more traditional animated film before Disney's next one, The Snow Queen... in 2013.
What a crual world we're living in...
UPDATE : It's even worse than I thought...
Due to the lower-than-expected box office for Princess & The Frog, there are currently internal talks at Disney to decide whether Snow Queen will stay a 2D film or will move to a 3D project!!! And apparently, Lasseter has no saying on this.
Source : A Disney animator who went back from the Germany promotional, where the film "bombed" too. I can safely say this is a real source.
http://www.disneycentralplaza.com/index.htm
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That was very cool using that Homer Simpson picture as a mood message.
Misfit
d501
ch
2,410,820
to
24,208,916,
I say that isn't bad at all. Hopefully, like Narnia it will boost up by Christmas.
ud
I disagree. For one thing, the story itself (the film content) isn't exactly making a splash; I don't think it being CGI or animated would really be a factor as far as its performance. Furthermore, early December was not the best time to release a movie like this.
Anyway, I was wondering for a few months if The Snow Queen would be 2D or 3D, glad to know it'll finaly be 2D
Squival-> in France it's a rather well-known tale, and several films and even animations had been made about it. If it's not as wellknown than some other princess tales it's still pretty popular
Perhaps this was more of a test, I mean Disney have a lot of money and are more than likely gunna try out another 2-D movie but (and this is my personal opinion) 'The Princess and The Frog' isn't exactly the most well known or largely favourited fairy tale out there (I'm assuming it's a fairy tale, I myself know little about it.)
Will have to see what Disney's next 2-D film choice will be.
tugalTCG
r343
It's not so much the film content that hurts it, than the huge slate of animated films being released recently. Even Disney released one (Scrooge/A Christmas Carol), and it may be part of the reason why it didn't do better (I don't think parents get their children to the cinemas every month...)
And as long as it's not CGI, less people go to see them (the stop motion films released recently didn't do particularly well either) The Simpsons movie was the only exception, because it's very very famous and was very expected...
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