Apr 17, 2023

Disney's "Strange World" film is the biggest box office failure of 2022, new report says.

Deadline reports that Disney's "Strange World" is Hollywood's biggest box office bomb of 2022, costing the studio about $200 million.

Here's a look at its bleak performance and what it means.

The Cost of "Strange World" - According to the report, Don Hall's film "Strange World" had a massive $180 million budget and an additional $90 million marketing budget. The total production cost of the film is estimated at approximately $317.4 million.

How much money did the film make - In total, "Strange World" grossed $73.6 million at the worldwide box office and another $55 million from television and streaming. Doing a little math, "Strange World" lost Disney $197 million, worse than any other Hollywood film in 2022. Worse, Pixar's "Lightyear," also distributed by parent company Disney, also lost $106 million and made Deadline's list of failures. Incidentally, Disney's last two animated feature films have lost a combined $303 million.

There were signs that the film would underperform: long before Strange World was released, the situation had deteriorated. Atlantis and Treasure Planet had failed at the box office. On top of that, the film generated little buzz for its theatrical debut and was hit by controversy, with at least 15 countries refusing to screen the film because of the presence of same-sex relationships.

Another factor in the failure of Straight to Streaming: Strange Worlds and Lightyear may be that parents are being conditioned to wait for children's movies to hit streaming platforms. Former CEO Bob Chapek and his team sent a string of Pixar features straight to Disney+ ("Soul," "Luka," "Turning Red"). At the time of Strange World's brutal release, an anonymous source at a rival studio told The Hollywood Reporter, "Families were trained to wait to watch Disney films at home."

What this loss means for Disney - financially, it doesn't mean much in the long run. Earlier this year, we asked Colin Tedards of The Investor Channel to explain how to read the quarterly financial reports of the major Hollywood studios. In his video essay, he said that these big movies often get a lot of media coverage, but are often not given much weight in corporate financial reports. One big hit like "Avatar/Water" or one big flop like "Strange World" ultimately makes little difference to Disney's overall performance. Creatively, however, Walt Disney Animation Studios is the crown jewel of Disney animation.

What the loss means for those involved in the film - For the artists involved, a flop can mean something else entirely; in 2019, two-time Academy Award nominee Kelly Asbury was extremely candid about the psychology of a director whose film was a box office flop She reflected on it and explained that perhaps it is obvious that "box office flops hurt." The entire article, written by the late filmmaker herself, is well worth reading and offers valuable insight into what happens after a big-budget studio film flops at the box office.