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Despite high expectations, Disney’s latest animated film, Wish, has been labeled by critics as a promotional effort disguised as entertainment. The movie’s disappointing box office performance, along with other 2023 Disney releases, raises questions about the company’s continued dominance in animation. Wish, a fantasy musical released alongside Disney’s centennial anniversary, ostensibly tells the story of a teenage heroine saving her kingdom by wishing upon a star. While it holds a positive audience score, critics argue it serves as a corporate propaganda exercise.
Initially anticipated to match the success of Elemental, Wish failed to meet expectations despite its trailer garnering more views than any Disney film in the current decade. Elemental, despite a slow start, concluded with a global box office gross of nearly $500 million and became a popular Disney+ title. Wish, however, shares the fate of other 2023 Disney films like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Haunted Mansion, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and The Marvels, all experiencing box office failures.
The underperformance of Wish, coupled with The Marvels’ struggles, suggests a potential shift in Disney’s animation landscape dominance. The once inevitable success of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe is now in question, and the box office disappointment of Wish hints at a possible end to Disney’s animation dominance.
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Wish’s Opening Weekend
Wish, an original IP animated film with a production cost of around $200 million, initially had high expectations for its opening weekend at the domestic box office, projecting a gross between $45 million and $50 million. This would have been noteworthy, considering no original IP animated film had surpassed $30 million in domestic box office since the start of the pandemic.
However, the film fell short of expectations, grossing only $19.7 million in its opening weekend and $31.6 million for the five-day Thanksgiving period. This performance was compared to Elemental, which opened with $29.6 million, and Encanto, a 2021 animated Thanksgiving release with a $27.2 million opening.
Wish’s $19.7 million domestic opening puts it above last year’s Strange World but is considered disappointing for a Disney animated film with a production cost exceeding $100 million. It is on track to be the first non-pandemic-affected Disney animated feature film, aside from Strange World, to fail to reach the $100 million domestic box office threshold since the 2007 film Meet the Robinsons, which ended with $97.8 million against a $150 million production cost.
Did Wish Have Staying Power After the Reviews?
Despite initial hopes for Wish to follow a similar path to Elemental and Encanto by gaining box office traction after a slow start, the movie’s fortunes took a downturn. In its second weekend, Wish experienced a significant drop of around sixty-two percent, earning just $7.4 million domestically and bringing its total to roughly $42 million. This decline, while not as severe as The Marvels, placed Wish behind Strange World, which had a fifty-eight percent second-weekend drop.
Comparisons with Trolls Band Together, a Universal Pictures animated comedy musical with a $95 million production cost, further highlight Wish’s underperformance. By its third weekend, Trolls Band Together had earned $74.8 million domestically, $85.8 million overseas, and a total of approximately $160.6 million worldwide. In contrast, Wish, with around $39.6 million from international markets, has a current global box office total of about $81.6 million. This indicates a notable gap between the two films in terms of commercial success.
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Wish Is a Failure at the Box Office
Assuming Disney’s film incurred a combined marketing and production cost of at least $300 million, a conservative estimate, Wish would need to gross a minimum of $600 million globally to break even theatrically. However, with the movie struggling to surpass the $100 million mark at the worldwide box office, it is poised to be among the least profitable films in recent history.
A potential silver lining for Disney is that the underperformance of Wish has shifted attention away from the recent struggles of The Marvels, which, having grossed approximately $190 million worldwide, appears comparatively more successful.
Some insiders attribute the box office disappointment of Disney’s movie and the broader decline of the Disney brand to changing audience habits, suggesting that viewers are increasingly accustomed to watching Disney films on Disney+. Others posit that Wish’s centennial-inspired theme may have been too self-referential, limiting its appeal to a wider audience.
The overall downturn in Disney’s box office performance appears linked to perceptions of a creative decline, leaving audiences questioning whether a compelling story is too much to wish for. For those who enjoyed Wish, an interview with the film’s star, Ariana DeBose, can be found in MovieWeb’s coverage below.
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