Text |Zero One.
On the occasion of celebrating the company's 100th anniversary, it has been a week since the release of Disney's animated film "Star Wish", and the box office results are only a "miserable" word.
North America is in the Thanksgiving schedule, and its first-week revenue is only $19.7 million, lagging behind "The Hunger Games: A Song of Songbirds and Serpents" and "Napoleon", only about 60% of expectations;The gap continued to widen, with "Star Wish" only reporting about $590,000 on Nov. 29, "Napoleon" at $1.3 million, and "The Hunger Games" at about $1.84 million, making it almost one of Disney's worst films in the North American market, only slightly better than last year's "Strange World," which had a dismal box office.
The results of "Star Wish" in the Chinese film market are also very cold, although Liu Yifei, Yu Shi and other popular stars have been found to warm up the topic, but the cumulative box office in the past week has not reached 40 million yuan. With the release of a new round of new films, the scheduling rate of "Star Wish" has dropped to 2%, and it is about to become the lowest-grossing Disney animation in the Chinese market in recent years. The previous "Summer Friends Sunny Day", "Legend of Dragon Hunting" and "Soul Journey" received 88.74 million and 12.7 billion, 37.6 billion yuan at the box office.
Since 2023, Disney has not had a single movie exceed $1 billion at the global box office, 8The $400 million "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" is Disney's best work in 2023, ranking only fourth in the global box office list;In 2019, Disney had 7 films exceeding $1 billion, and the films produced by Disney and its subsidiaries occupied the top five at the global box office, accounting for 8 of the top 10 at the global box office.
Compared to the terrifying box office peak of 2019, Disney is now clearly stuck in a quagmire in movies.
The box office of "Wishing Star" is not as good as expected, which may be due to the overall decline of the entire Hollywood market in 2023, but this year, movies such as "Barbie", "Super Mario" and "Oppenheimer" are still big hits around the world, and none of them are Disney-produced films, which is not fully explained by the general environment.
In terms of movie quality alone, "Star Wish" is mediocre at best, not a bad movie, and it is better than "Strange World" and "Captain Marvel 2", which have collapsed in word-of-mouth. But this Disney animation, which was launched on the occasion of the centenary, is like a microcosm of the careful, cautious, tired, boring and mediocre nature of Disney content today.
Since the plot of the film is simple and there is no suspense, the spoilers mentioned below do not have much impact. The script of "Star Wish" is a "dystopian" story set in a fantasy land outside the Iberian Peninsula, where 17-year-old Yasha and her family live in the kingdom of wishes "Rosas", which was founded by the magician Manifico, who was given their wishes and forgotten until the king decided to fulfill one of them during each celebration.
Yasha applied to be the king's assistant, and learned during the conversation that many people's wishes, including his 100-year-old grandfather, were considered too dangerous by the king to never come true, so Yasha prayed to the stars that "everyone has their own wishes" and attracted a wish star, and the narcissistic king was directly blackened, and then it was the happy ending of the whole chorus to defeat the king and find his wish.
Objectively speaking, although the story of "Star Wish" is simple, it is not shallow. In the film, "I'The song "M A Star" is to express that you, me, and everything are actually the dust of the stars, and we are the stars themselves. Therefore, in the act of making a wish to the stars, our own dreams or wishes must be fulfilled by ourselves, and we should not leave it to others to judge what is a reasonable wish.
This story, whether it is extended to the aspect of "you and I are stars", or to the aspect of "resisting control and pursuing dreams", has more layers of content space.
But very, very regrettably, "Star Wish" seems to be "chasing ducks on the shelves", from the beginning to the end is too simple child's play, without any ins and outs of character building, without a little in-depth creation of the worldview, resulting in the rebellion is not so exciting, the wish is not so touching, the comedy elements are not so funny, the deep place is not profound, and the interesting place is not interesting enough.
A successful Disney animation should have a multi-level understanding of the content, both innocence and depth - for children, teenagers, **, people of different ages will have their own movie experience, "Toy Story", "Frozen", "Dream Travel" are all like this, but "Star Wish" failed to do this.
The commendable part of "Star Wish" is still **, whether it is the original ** or the medium version, it is very attentive, and the mood is very in place. In order to achieve an effect of paying tribute to the classic painting style, the picture production of the movie has instead created a rough 3D animation effect, which is said to be expensiveIt can only be said that in recent years, the visual effects of many domestic animated films have looked better than "Star Wish".
2023 is coming to an end, but it is the most turbulent year for Disney in the past 100 years.
In addition to the movie box office not as expected, this is also the year that Bob Iger returns to the helm as CEO of Disney, and when Iger was in charge last year, Disney was in the most difficult moment, because of the huge losses in the streaming business and the sluggish performance of new films, when Disney's stock price went all the way from its peak.
After Iger's return, he mentioned four major directions for revitalizing Disney at different times: First, the flow of ** business to achieve sustainable and considerable profits;Second, build ESPN into a top digital sports platform;3. Improve the output and efficiency of the film business;Fourth, maintain the growth of "experience business" (mainly amusement parks and derivatives).
Now that a year has passed, Disney's several businesses have been repaired to varying degrees, Disney has made significant layoffs to reduce costs, and has also given up investment in the flow ** business regardless of the cost, the flow ** loss has narrowed, Disney+ has added nearly 7 million subscribers in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2023, and after the release of the latest financial report, Disney's stock price has lasted for about a month. At the Disney company conference, Iger said the company is committed to quality over quantity, and will move from a "repair" period to a "build again" period.
Whether it is a sequel to a Marvel movie, an original story, or Disney animation, the overall Disney movie has been lackluster since 2023, and the fatigue is still continuing, and the IP effect generated by high-quality content has always been the foundation of Disney's overall business layout.
For Marvel movies, Disney claimed to cut back on sequel plans, and Iger confirmed earlier this year that Marvel's future goal is to shoot fewer sequels and focus on creating more high-quality works, and given the cyclical nature of film production, the next two years will be a real time period to verify this claim.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, the "golden mountain" in the past ten years, has now reached the point where it has to be "overturned and restarted" - in the past two or three years, all the new Marvel movie films, it seems that only one "Silver Guardian 3" can be called above the level, and the "Ant-Man 3" that promoted the arrival of the big boss Kang the Conqueror in the next stage hit the streets, and the Kang actor was deeply involved in off-site scandals, and the epic street attack of "Captain Marvel 2" in the second half of the year made Marvel movies synonymous with boring and only politically correct bad movies.
Whether it is the audience or Iger, they may realize that the current "cinematic universe" idea has become a drag on Marvel movies rather than a plus, if Marvel movies do not return to the thinking of "entertaining the public" itself to create movies, then this mountain of gold will be forced to end and restart in the endless emotional consumption.
When it comes to shaping a company's image, there's nothing quite like a movie. Iger said this in an interview. For this century-old film giant, which has created countless brilliant achievements, the film performance since 2023 has turned the company's image into an old, boring, shallow image covered by value issues, and the IP effect has become an infinite squeeze on existing IP, and new content has not taken on new possibilities.
The old boss Iger is about to retire in 2026, and how Disney returns to content and how to achieve the return of film content will become the core point of what Disney will become in the next decade.
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