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What are Disney's biggest bombs financially?

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2005 9:02 pm
by streetsofgold
Anyone know?

Iam guessing live action wise of more recent years, it has to be newsies.

As for animation?

Treasure planet (foolish disney for putting it up against harry potter in US)
sleeping beauty
the black cauldron (it deserved better)
fantasia
bambi

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2005 9:21 pm
by jamminjake245
Bambi!? NO WAY! lol

Also you may want to slow down on the threads. :o

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2005 11:47 pm
by Lucylover1986
Alice in Wonderland did really bad at the box office.

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2005 11:50 pm
by Siren
Home on the Range

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:40 am
by memnv
Jungle Book 2

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:53 am
by MickeyMousePal

Dumbo
Saludos Amigos
The Three Caballeros
Make Mine Music
Fun and Fancy Free
Melody Time
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Alice in Wonderland
The Aristocats
The Sword in the Stone
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers
The Fox and the Hound
The Black Cauldron
The Rescuers Down Under
Fantasia 2000
Treasure Planet
Home on the Range

Re: What are Disney's biggest bombs financially?

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 2:00 am
by singerguy04
streetsofgold wrote:Anyone know?

Iam guessing live action wise of more recent years, it has to be newsies.

As for animation?

Treasure planet (foolish disney for putting it up against harry potter in US)
sleeping beauty
the black cauldron (it deserved better)
fantasia
bambi

Bambi and Fantasia? yeah it's not like they aren't going or have gone platinum....

Sleeping Beauty, i wish would've done better, silly people of the day lol

there are many, but that is a negative way to look at these classics. many of the films that did bad or "bombed" i don't think really deserved to, it's just that they were against the odds. i find it sad how people base their opinions of movies by how much money they made. i'm not directing this towards anyone, just venting!

Re: What are Disney's biggest bombs financially?

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 2:27 am
by 2099net
singerguy04 wrote:
streetsofgold wrote:Anyone know?

Iam guessing live action wise of more recent years, it has to be newsies.

As for animation?

Treasure planet (foolish disney for putting it up against harry potter in US)
sleeping beauty
the black cauldron (it deserved better)
fantasia
bambi

Bambi and Fantasia? yeah it's not like they aren't going or have gone platinum....
I don't know about Bambi, but Fantasia never made a profit until the release on home video, IIRC.
Sleeping Beauty, i wish would've done better, silly people of the day lol
Sleeping Beauty was still the second highest performing movie of 1959, loosing only to Ben-Hur. You can't really complain.See here
there are many, but that is a negative way to look at these classics. many of the films that did bad or "bombed" i don't think really deserved to, it's just that they were against the odds. i find it sad how people base their opinions of movies by how much money they made. i'm not directing this towards anyone, just venting!
Of course the amount of money a film takes has no reflection on it's quality 90% of the time. Especially these days, where high-ticket prices, pre-opening previews, extended weekends and free ticket promos distort the figures.

I think it's pretty much acknowledged that Treasure Planet is Disney's biggest flop (something that, suspiciously, they 'admitted' within a week of it's opening, so who knows, perhaps they turned it into a giant tax write-off and didn't loose as much as people are led to believe as a result?). Home on the Range didn't do too well either. But personally, I can think of at least 5 Disney animated films that are worse than both of these, in my opinion, of course.

Films like Teacher's Pet, Jungle Book 2 and The Lizzie McGuire Movie cannot be called flops, because while they only took a few millions at the box office, they only cost a few millions to make, and undoubtably earned their money back several times over when home video sales are added to the equation.

Live action wise, I think that it's probably The Country Bears (although again this didn't exactly cost mega-dollars to make) making about $17m at the box office. I'm sure with home video sales, it managed to make a profit.

How The Country Bears could only gather $17m while the same year Scooby Doo managed $154m and Like Mike managed $51 constantly amazes me. (And we won't even go into how poorly the wonderful Powerpuff Girls movie did).

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 6:26 am
by BlueDevilSF
In the live action range, I'd say Condorman ranks up there.

Re: What are Disney's biggest bombs financially?

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 6:32 am
by Kenai
singerguy04 wrote: there are many, but that is a negative way to look at these classics. many of the films that did bad or "bombed" i don't think really deserved to, it's just that they were against the odds. i find it sad how people base their opinions of movies by how much money they made. i'm not directing this towards anyone, just venting!
I agree, I'm really sick of how figures always determines a movie's success these days. That's all anyone really cares about is how much a movie will make to determine it's status. Look at movies like Braveheart, O Brother Where Art Thou? The Millon Dollar Baby, etc etc etc. They all underperformed below box office 'hit' standards and only made so much domestically, and yet they're regarded as some of the best movies ever.

Oh and BTW, about Saludos and Caballeros being bombs, I've read otherwise. That they actually managed some success to a certain degree here.

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 8:20 am
by jamminjake245
Sorry, but The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh did well in the box office for each and every showing.

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 4:48 pm
by Timon/Pumbaa fan
MickeyMousePal wrote:
Dumbo
Dumbo wasn't a flop. In fact in it's first release it did better than both Fantasia and Pinocchio combined, not to mention that Dumbo had a much cheaper budget than both films. In fact it was so popular it was originally going to be on the Time Magazine cover however the idea was dropped due to the attacks at Pearl Harbor.

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 5:11 pm
by MickeyMousePal
Well I thought Dumbo was a flop since it was re-release at the threaters.

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 9:55 pm
by Incrediholics Anonymous
I don't think Treasure Planet bombed because it was up against Harry Potter (well, that was likely a part of it).

When my mom and I saw Lilo and Stitch, and that trailer came up, and it told us what it was, we both laughed. It was the dumbest idea for a movie I had ever seen. Also, be remined that in 2002, I was 11, and pretty much liked every movie or trailer I saw - but the Treasure Planet trailer...oh man.

Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2005 7:35 pm
by sethn172
Siren wrote:Home on the Range
:up: Good work, pal.

But most of the 80s stuff are true candidates.

sethn172

What are Disney's biggest bombs financially?

Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2005 7:38 pm
by FantasiaMan
Fantasia was a commercial success, but a financial failure. Fantasia was only released in around 20-25 theaters (equipped with Fantasound) at the time, so most of the other theaters didn't show it until around January of 1941. But RKO, who distributed Fantasia, cut the film down from the original 120 minute version to an 80 minute "popular" version, which had most of Deems Taylor's interstitials & dialogue & the whole Toccata & Fugue sequence cut out of the film. When the film was rereleased every few years, it became more popular after every release, especially in the 60's. When the film debuted on video in the early 90's, it was the top grossing video up to that time. With the money from the video release, Roy Disney had a reason to promote Fantasia 2000 to Michael Eisner.

So it was a failure at it's first release, but over the years it became one of the most popular & influencial films of the 20th century (ranked around 46th-50th greatest film of all time by the Film Institute).

Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2005 8:34 pm
by jamminjake245
This is the exact same title as another thread..

Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2005 8:51 pm
by brownie
I think FantasiaMan's having a problem replying to the original thread.

Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2005 9:36 pm
by Pasta67
He probably just tried to reply to the thread and accidentally clicked "New Thread". I've almost done that a few times.

Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2005 5:51 pm
by Kram Nebuer
MickeyMousePal wrote:Well I thought Dumbo was a flop since it was re-release at the threaters.
When Disney realized how profitable a rerelease could be (releasing an old movie w/o having to spend more money to make a new one) after Snow White and the Seven Dwarf's rerelease, rereleasing became a tradition for most of his movies (as with other film companies). I think Dumbo did really well though. They were suprised that a low budget feature made more than Fantasia and Pinnochio. Though that could be partly blamed on WWII since his revenue from Europe was frozen and, well, there probably weren't many theaters/theatergoers to show/watch his movies since their countries were getting annihilated. So overall, rereleases were usually b/c the public's new generation of moviegoers haven't seen a recently old movie or to see if they would do better.