Bob Chapek is long gone from Disney, but as Bob Iger tries to clean up the financial mess of his predecessor, there are constant reminders of the previous Bob’s complete ineptness.
This week, the company was hit in the face with another one, the absolute box office bomb that the Disney movie “Strange World” is turning out to be at the box office.
Even though the company seemed to have access to polling data and a marketing team, Disney discovered the hard and expensive way that there isn’t a tremendous clamoring for lousy animation movies.
The weekend was one of the worst openings for a Disney flick in modern times. It pulled in $11.9 million over the holiday, which gave it a five-day total of $18.6 million.
Why did it do so poorly? People didn’t like it for one thing. That led to little buzz and poor reviews from film critics who were paid to watch it. The budget was $180 million, meaning that the film would need to make $360 million because of marketing costs and distribution fees to break even. Which is as likely as Chapek growing a full head of hair by Christmas.
Here’s what David A. Gross, the president of the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research told Variety.
“At a cost of $180 million, plus marketing expenses, the film will finish in the red, even with good ancillary income.”
Meanwhile, Iger continues to rid Disney of ineffective lieutenants of Chapek, including his speech writer Arthur Bochner, who was quite frankly bad at what he did, considering his boss was fired for his public statements. The ex-CEO was completely inept at motivating people and was the guy who wrote the words that Chapek repeatedly bumbled.
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