Disney's 'Pete's Dragon' underwhelmed in its opening weekend, making it 3 of 4 of Disney's tent pole movies that stumbled in the summer Hollywood box office derby

Disney's Pete's Dragon was trounced over the weekend by an unexpected raunchy R-rated CGI animation feature that
kids could not go to see. How embarrassing is that? 
Update 8/16/16:

It's now official. The Walt Disney Studios have completely run out of any new ideas for making movies, so they've gone full tilt on tired live-action reboots and sequels of past Disney animation classics.

Another day and another announcement of a Disney live-action reboot of a classic
Disney animation movie as Disney announces a live-action version of The Little
Mermaid after Disney stumbles on 3 of 4 movies in this year's the summer box office
Disney today announced it will be remaking its 1989 classic animation movie, The Little Mermaid, after bombing this summer with 3 of 4 movies stumbling at the summer box office.

Disney's last summer entry, Pete's Dragon, disappointed this past weekend at the box office, confirming what many movie industry insiders already know that movie-going audiences have tired of sequels, remakes, and reboots this summer—even if they are critically praised.

In the age of Disney's numerous reboots and retreads, no one would call the current studio period another golden age for Disney Studios as original movie ideas have all but dried up at the official Disney Studios marquee.

A string of notorious bombs (e.g., Home on the Range, The Black Cauldron, Treasure Planet, Around the World in 80 Days, The 13th Warrior, The Alamo, Mars Needs Moms, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, John Carter, Tomorrowland, The Finest Hours, The BFG, and Pete's Dragon) has left the official Disney movie studios marquee reeling, so studio executives have had to revert to rebooting mostly animation movies as live-action remakes from its vault to try to salvage the studio's box office tallies.


Upcoming live-action movies for release and future movie projects in the Disney Studios' queue for upcoming feature attractions include Beauty and the Beast, The Jungle Book 2, Cruella, Maleficent 2, Dumbo, Mulan, Winnie the Pooh, Pinocchio, Genies, Night on Bald Mountain, The Sword in the Stone, and a live action Tinkerbell—all of which reboots and retreads of past Disney animation glories from time gone by.


Disney's latest studio strategy of doubling-down on rehashing old and too-familiar movie concepts deep from Disney's vaults is curious given the fact that the rest of the movie industry is suddenly abandoning and pivoting away from that business strategy given its utter failure in this summer's movie season with "sequel fatigue."


Is this continuation of the "same-old" a recipe for disaster for Walt Disney Studios? Only time will tell.


However, the latest news of Disney rebooting The Little Mermaid, after Universal was already planning a live-action version of the story, confirms what many experts have already known for some time: the magic is truly gone from the House of Mouse.


Previous article:

We called it. Disney's last movie tent pole entry of the summer stumbled at the box office.

3 of 4 Disney tent poles bombed at the box office this summer.
The BFG is shown above.
After a dismal history of major tent-pole bombs and disappointments at the movie box office, the official live-action Disney Studios marquee still had a lot to prove in living up to Disney's other, more successful, and track-proven movie studio units that were acquired from outside through major corporate buy-outs within the past decade (e.g., Pixar, LucasFilm, Marvel, etc.)

Disney's official, live-action studio brand has not produced an original, certifiable box office franchise hit in quite some time—the last notable one being The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise from 2003—so Disney Studios had to play it safe by pivoting its business strategy some time ago by remaking many of Disney Animation Studio's classics into live-action reboots (e.g., Alice in Wonderland, Malificent, Cinderella, and The Jungle Book) as a result of the studio's dismal track record of a long slump of original content bombs and duds.

But even their latest safe-strategy Disney vault reboot, Pete's Dragon, has stumbled out of the gate at the box office, begging the question to be asked: What will it take to revive the official Disney movie marquee, if even live-action reboots will no longer capture the public's imagination?


Over the weekend, Pete's Dragon was badly overshadowed and beaten down at the box office by a raunchy, unexpected, adult audience-oriented CGI animation movie, Sony's Sausage Party, which has a much more limited target audience than the usual big family fair movies from Disney.

Disney's other major bomb this summer, Alice Through
the Looking Glass
Yet the R-rated Sausage Party, which only cost $19 million to make and opened in 3,103 theaters nationwide, easily trounced Pete's Dragon which cost $65 million to make and opened much wider in 3,702 theaters nationwide with a lot of critical praise.

The reason why Pete's Dragon stumbled out of the gate was very apparent to us from just the trailers we saw several weeks ago in advance to the movie's release. Making the dragon a large furry green plush dog with wings wasn't going to capture anyone's imagination, especially with kids today.

It wouldn't matter how much critical praise the movie would actually garner, which surprisingly was a lot. The CGI problems with the Dragon itself was too much of a distraction from the movie, which could have benefited from a less cartoonish rendering of the green dragon. Thus, it was no surprise that the masses didn't come out to see the movie.

The weekend totals were won by Warner Bros' Suicide Squad, in its second week of release, which brought in an additional $43.8 million to its cumulative total of $465.4 million worldwide, followed by Sony's Sausage Party which brought in $33.6 million, with Pete's Dragon coming in a distant third with only $21.5 million in box office receipts.

Overseas, Pete's Dragon only brought in an additional and dismal $5.1 million from 12 different markets, which is bad news for Disney any way you look at it because the movie was projected to make $31 million at the U.S. box office this weekend and expected to come in second behind Suicide Squad.


Since the beginning of the summer movie season after Memorial Day, Disney has seen 3 of 4 of its summer tent poles stumble out of the block. Alice Through the Looking Glass and The BFG, which both cost well over $150 million to make, were big box office flops with only Pixar's Finding Dory being a bright spot for Disney this summer.

How an R-rated adult-oriented CGI animation feature
beat out a Disney family feature completely caught
the studios off guard
So it's quite clear that, even when Disney pulls back on the production budgets of some of its live-action Disney-branded productions from over $150 million to about $65 million, what they get is still a big disappointment at the box office.

After having a string of the most notorious and expensive original cinematic box office bombs of any major Hollywood movie studio in recent memory (e.g., Home on the Range, The Black Cauldron, Treasure Planet, Around the World in 80 Days, The 13th Warrior, The Alamo, Mars Needs Moms, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, John Carter, Tomorrowland, The Finest Hours, and The BFG), the pressure was really on for Disney's struggling live-action movie studios to deliver a box office hit.

A string of perpetual, big-budget failures at the Walt Disney Animation Studios a few years ago completely killed off all of Disney's hand-drawn animation feature projects in 2013, with the last such project being 2009's The Princess and the Frog.

Disney's official animation studios banner had since had to followed in Pixar's direction, under the creative guidance of Pixar chief John Lasseter, in producing only computer animated projects such as Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, and Zootopia. Disney Animation Studios has essentially become a redundant clone of Pixar Animation Studios with no real separate identity from their more successful sister studio brand.


But what do you do about Disney's other continuing struggles with its live-action Disney Studio brand, which is again faltering at the box office in, not only its original concept movies, but also with many of its supposedly fail-proof live-action reboots of classic Disney animation movies from its vaults?

Who could forget Disney's summer tent pole bomb from last year, Tomorrowland?
Everybody, apparently.
There's not much else you can do at this point except what Disney is already doing now in limiting their losses by dramatically reducing its production budgets, hoping that one of their lower budgeted live-action reboots will catch fire again; however, that will only work so far until movie audiences demand some original content and creativity again.

At that point, Disney Studios will once again encounter the same old problems that they have in years past: How will they compete with other movie studios that produce more creative, original, and edgier big budget movies that appeals to a much bigger audience than just the family-fun fair?


To date, Disney Studios have no answers to this particular dilemma as their slump has been going on for well over a decade.


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