Aren’t box office analysts supposed to, you know, analyze the box office? That’s their job, correct, to look at the box office performance of any given title and lay out the reasons for that performance or the lack thereof?
Well, we don’t have box office analysts anymore.
We have Woke Pravda
We have a bunch of left-wing hacks writing around the truth because, in the case of Lightyear, no one in left-wing Hollywood wants the truth to be the truth.
Before we get to it, allow me to lay out the facts for you…
On Friday, Lightyear was released into something like 4,300 theaters, including premium theaters, like IMAX, that charge premium prices.
Lightyear was released into a movie-going world where we know people are dying to get back to the movies. The massive over-performance of Top Gun: Maverick and the stellar performance of the critically lambasted Jurassic World Dominion prove that.
Lightyear was released into a movie ecosystem with no competition for kiddie dollars.
Lightyear was released into a movie ecosystem where families are coming out for kiddie movies, even Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which opened to $72 million.
Lightyear is part of the most iconic and popular kiddie franchise ever created. Since 1995, four Toy Story movies have been released, and each of them has grossed more than the previous one. That is almost unheard of.
Finally, the oh-so-smart box office analysts were telling us Lightyear would easily open to $70 to $85 million because of course it would—it’s part of the most popular kiddie franchise in history!
But now Lightyear has tanked and has embarrassed everyone, including the child groomers at the Walt Disney CO., who poured $200 million into production costs and another $100 in promotion costs.
Yep, Lightyear made a measly $51 million, which is even less than the first Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), which opened to $58 million.
Everything was laid out on a silver platter for Lightyear, everything was primed, everything was perfect, and then something went horribly, horribly wrong…
It wasn’t the reviews. Lightyear scored a healthy 77 percent fresh at Rotten Tomatoes, which is better than both of the Sonic movies that opened better.
It can’t be word-of-mouth. The Cinemascore is a healthy A-.
It can’t be oversaturation. It’s been three years since we’ve seen a Toy Story movie.
So we have the most popular animated franchise in history, solid reviews, and a wide-open field with families raring to return to the movies… What could it be? What could it be?
Could it be that the child groomers at Walt Disney added homosexuality to this legendary franchise?
Could that be it? Could it be that adding same-sex sex to a kiddie movie is something people do not want to subject themselves or their kids to?
Well, if you’re a normal and honest human being, you know that’s the answer. We’ve seen it before. Woke is so poisonous, toxic, hated, and repugnant that it killed Star Wars as a film franchise.
But if you read the trades, the overpaid box office analysts, you’ll find them looking ridiculous to avoid even suggesting that adding homosexuality to a children’s movie might have hurt the box office. Watch these outlets make fools out of themselves for the cause:
Blame the fact that it doesn’t appeal to girls, blame Disney+ for stealing family moviegoers, blame the lack of an ensemble Toy Story cast, heck, blame everything as Disney/Pixar’s Lightyear didn’t do its magic by internal studio or industry standards this weekend with $51M, close to a third below its lowest $70M pre-release projection.
[…]
It’s clear the majority of Toy Story fans are not out in abundance. Remember that movie is an ensemble pic in all its toy characters, an appealing factor for all the parents that grew up with those icons like slinky dog and Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. Also limiting audiences here with Lightyear is that there’s not much for girls to hook their hats on; the outer space aspect makes this spinoff a big driver for boys, hence the turnout of more boys than girls.
Also, families in an inflation economy might be choosing their battles in a streaming laden marketplace: They’ll go see Jurassic on the big screen, which won’t be in the homes for a while, but might wait to see an nth Toy Story movie.
“[‘Lightyear’] is running into the limitations of the spin-off form,” says David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “This is still elite business, it’s just no longer defying gravity.”
[…]
“[The film’s] marketing never made quite clear the connection to Andy’s favorite toy until the last second. And they’ve been marketing this movie for a while,” says Shawn Robbins, the chief analyst at Box Office Pro.
It wasn’t online controversy over a same-sex kiss between two married non-white grandmothers. Jurassic World Dominion and Doctor Strange 2 both have non-white lesbian characters, with DeWanda Wise being a major character in the former. Nobody cares that Patricia Heaton accused Disney of castrating Buzz Lightyear via swapping out Tim Allen for Chris Evans.
That one is my favorite. As though there isn’t all the difference in the world between gay characters and a gay kiss, not to mention two movies made for adults compared to Lightyear, which is made for kids.
I could go on, but you get the point…
As far as I’m concerned, let them whistle past the graveyard. If the child groomers at Disney want to lose $300 million and see their stock tank even further, decent people will find watching that a whole lot more entertaining than these shitty movies.