Over the summer, a lot of fuss was made when Pixar’s animated film Elemental failed to immediately take off at the box office. Conservatives declared victory in the “Go woke, go broke” war. There were some think pieces about whether or not Disney+ and streaming services were taking families away from actually seeing kids movies in theaters, yada, yada, yada. But, plot twist: Elemental made a comeback and ended up not only doing very well at the box office, but also became one of Disney+’s most streamed movies of the year. Disney’s newest animated film, Wish seems to be following a similar trajectory to Elemental.
Wish was released in theaters last week, on November 22. Wish stars Ariana DeBose as the main character, Asha. It also features the voices of Best Chris, Chris Pine, Alan Tudyk, Natasha Rothwell, Victor Garber, Angelique Cabral, and Jennifer Kumiyama. The plot centers around 17-year-old Asha, who makes a wish upon a star to save her community from the villain, King Magnifico (Pine). Just like Elemental, Wish didn’t have a strong opening weekend. Unlike Elemental, which was favored by both critics and viewers, Wish is the first Disney movie in two decades to be certified “rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes. As of right now, it has a 50% approval rating by critics, but an 81% audience score.
Disney’s new animated film, Wish, just dropped into theaters this week, and the first opinions of viewers aren’t fairing well for the new movie. Rotten Tomatoes shows only 50 percent approval on the Tomatometer, officially placing Wish in the “rotten” category, for now.
The last time Disney produced a “rotten” animated film was nearly 20 years ago when the company released Chicken Little. Rotten Tomatoes shows that Chicken Little is extremely “rotten” with only a 37 percent rating on the Tomatometer.
However, the audience score for Disney’s newest film shows that there may yet be hope for Wish, as it stands at 82 percent positive thus far. It’s still early for Disney’s newest feature film, and the production company plans for Wish to be a competitor this Black Friday weekend.
On its first day in theaters, Disney’s Wish brought in $8.3 million, and it is expected to bring in around $45 million on its opening weekend. Though $45 million may not sound too shabby, it’s not nearly enough of a success when the budget for the film sits around $200 million.
Currently, Disney’s Wish is fighting for the spotlight against Napoleon and The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The good news for the movie is that it is one of the top three movies in theaters this holiday weekend.
[From Giant Freakin Robot]
We will probably take my kids to see this movie sometime over the next two weeks. We live across the street from our local cinema and like to do Sunday matinees as a family whenever there is a kids’ or family movie out. (Side note: Seeing Back to the Future in theaters last month was *awesome.*) If we hadn’t been traveling to see family for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, we may very well have ended up going to see it. But we were out doing extended-family things, so we didn’t go. I suspect that this was the case with a lot of families with young children. Plus, I bet streaming services like Disney+ do have somewhat of an impact on theater-going. Plenty of kids don’t like or can’t handle going to the movies. Add in how expensive it can get, why bother with the stress and the expense when you can just stay home and watch something on the app that you’re already paying for each month? I’ll be interested to see if Wish makes a similar box office comeback as Elemental did, especially now that we’re about to settle into the winter-weather months.
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