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‘Hedgehog’ still has upper claw over ‘Mufasa’ with $62m+ in pre-Christmas frame as ‘Lion King’ prequel loses crown
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- Authors
- Anthony D'Alessandro
- Published
- Dec 22 2024
- Word count
- 2430 words
I didn't post the box office last weekend, long story short was that Kraven the Hunter flopped massively after terrible critical and audience reception and Sony is ceasing production on any more films in that universe and will instead be focusing on Spider-Man 4 and the animated films.
Mufasa is yet another sequel to a billion dollar hit from 2019 that has underperformed. Barry Jenkins has been very open that this was just a paid gig. He took three years of his life making this film so that he can work from LA and he said he liked the script enough. Unfortunately it seems like this won't be a huge money maker. It's doing worse than last year's Wonka with generally worse reception. Jenkins got paid either way but he probably won't have the cache he would have had if it had been a hit (like how Ritchie has been able to do whatever he wants since 2019's Aladdin). Maybe it can hold well over the holidays.
The Sonic franchise has been consistent. I don't think anyone would believe you if you went back in 2019 (after the release of Lion King and the poorly received Sonic trailer) that a third Sonic film would beat out a Lion King prequel at the box office.
I'll preface this by saying that I haven't seen any of the live-action remakes.
Everybody needs to remember for every Disney hit, there is a littany of "straight-to-VHS" sequels and terrible TV shows. Straight to VHS has been been replaced with streaming, and the bar for theatrical releases is lower than ever.
I saw Moana 2. It was about on par with Return of Jafar.
Moana 2 was made as a Disney+ show which was stitched together for theatrical release. Which is why this is the case.
Why am I not surprised?
One of the better Disney sequels FYI, which kicked off a TV series.
That's because it was the first. Also because it was a bunch of TV episodes stitched together, much like Moana 2.
I know because I wore that VHS tape out in our car VCR. That's the 90s equivalent of having a tablet in the car for a 14 hour drive.
I don't think I can agree with that, because unlike Cinderella 2 or Belle's Magical World, it wasn't literally three subplots with a barely existent framing device. Aladdin 2 had one unified plot, though it was also undoubtedly a TV pilot, hence the open ending.
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls022726975/
Oh man, similar story. I actually watched it before the original because my family didn't have much growing up, and a VHS to be played many times was cheaper and stretched further than a one-time cinema ticket. I still remember Genie Jafar's epic laugh when he's freed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_Jafar
Wiki says it was the first five episodes stitched together.
That's weird. I can believe it was a multi-part episode, or that it took up the production costs of those five episodes, or that those five had their plots rewritten to the pacing of a feature film, but I can't believe that five standalone episodes were stitched together into a feature film, in the way the two above examples were made of three each.
The show was great, and the best part was after it ended, it was capped off with Aladdin and the Forty Thieves with Robin Williams back as the Genie.
It may only be domestically, but I'm still impressed that a video game franchise may legitmately have a better performance than "tier 1" disney film, one whose prequel (or rather, "prequel sequel") had one of the best box office openings of any "animated" works. I guess it wasn't just a "old man yelling at cloud" moment when asking myself "who was asking for this"?
Meanwhile, Sonic 3 was great for fans and I feel it had the best balance of "for the kids/families" and "for the fans" moments yet. The comeback of this franchise from its controversial opening trailer for the first movie is simply unheard of in this industry.
Sonic has a weirdly broad appeal. I personally found the movies to be enjoyable but very shallow but I guess people found it very charming? One podcaster I listen to, Nicole Byer, absolutely loves movie Sonic. It’s terribly funny for me to listen to her talk about it but she legitimately seems to be sincere.
I haven’t watched any of the movies as of yet, but could part of the appeal be that they’re fun in a way that movies generally haven’t been in a while?
Very likely. They're very 'light' movies that don't ever really feel very tense at all. They're not my cup of tea but most mass appeal movies these days aren't either.
They're not too serious, but they also don't kill every emotional moment like Marvel films. There is some genuine heart in the films.
Couple examples of the kind of gags the movies have:
It's also worth mentioning that this is Jim Carrey at his absolute best. The films wouldn't be the same without him. I don't usually care for his zany characters, but he's somehow perfect for Dr. Eggman!
https://youtu.be/2S5Cbh6in0s
Sonic as a franchise is full of incomprehensible plot beats (pretty sure there's no way to convince someone to take a plot seriously when first 3d game's plot involves a giant bipedal cat literally fishing out his pet frog from a water demon, because the frog ate a giant magic space rock). But the appeal comes from the character beats, moments, and interactions with others. That's definitely why you'll see Sonic fanart proliferate throughout all age groups. They completely nailed the designs back in the 90's, and for a video game at that time, that was by far the most important aspect of fostering a franchise.
So fans can somewhat forgive (2nd movie plot beats) a human wedding scene turning into a secret agent shootout or the general idea of a police officer adopting two anthropomorphic aliens as family, as long as they get a tender moment of Sonic and Tails bonding together, Knuckles saving Sonic from drowning, and a Super Sonic proceeding to completely eviscerate a giant robot. Those character beats are the lifeforce of the franchise.
EDIT: oh yeah. and of course I can't make a Sonic post without lauding the music. Sonic had legendary chiptune in the 90's, and introduced an entire generation of gamers in the 00's to rock. It's understated in the movies, but Sonic 3 is definitely starting to understand this heritage.
I’d guess that the novelty of live-action Disney remakes has worn off almost entirely by this point. We’ll see if that’s the case with their next one, but personally I think they’d be well served by returning to a focus on animation.
This is a genuine question and I'm not trying to be rude. Why are people so interested in box office numbers like this?
Can’t speak for anyone else, but I keep tabs on it for fun as a harmless horse race.
Thanks for sharing. I feel like looking for big payouts is honestly hurting the film industry, but maybe I'm wrong. I have not been interested in movies for the past 15 years because the majority of them are created to get the largest population to laugh. There's a few that I've seen that have changed my perspective a bit, but I cringe when i see these headlines come out.
I'm in a very similar boat. I used to watch tons of movies when I was a young man. I had a friend who worked at Blockbuster, and almost every night it seems my friend group would gather at his apartment and watch whatever garbage he brought home, heads swimming with beer and THC.
After that group parted ways, as groups do, I kept up with movies for a few years, but gradually lost most of my interest in them. Around about 2008 or so, I lost almost all of my interest in cinema. I'll still watch a movie here and there, but most of the stuff I watch has some speculative element or other. I tend to watch only big sci-fi or fantasy productions these days, and not even as many of those as I used to. TV has suffered even worse.
I know that most of this change is down to me and my changing taste, but I think part of the blame–if blame needs assigning–is down to the stories that Hollywood chooses to tell. They very rarely take anything approaching a chance anymore, and I think part of that is down to how the entertainment industry has changed with the advent of broadband Internet.
The barrier for entry to produce and distribute "content" has dropped so far that the sort of people who used to be attracted to cinema as an art form are pulled elsewhere. Today's Kevin Smith is more likely to start a YouTube channel than to put himself $60k into credit card debt to produce a "Clerks." Quentin Tarantino would most likely become a bedroom videogame programmer today (maybe not, but you see my point).
The only way Hollywood has to differentiate and justify itself is in huge productions costing hundreds of millions, and with that expense comes intense risk aversion and the imperative to see profit. That's partly why we see so many sequels, prequels and remakes–something which is also rampant in AAA videogame production, but I digress.
I'm fine with having moved on from movies. I don't really miss them all that much, and even if they did somehow miraculously enter a renaissance, I doubt I'd go back on the bandwagon.
Thanks for sharing, I feel a lot of the same things. I feel like taste changing probably contributed a lot as well. I do enjoy much longer form content these days, and a movie never gives me enough. But I will always come back to the failing Hollywood studios trying to pump out garbage that the main demographic will enjoy.
One of the biggest factors for me isn't that I prefer long-form or short-form content, it's that I might prefer either depending on my mood. Streaming media, particularly YouTube, has taken over my passive media consumption precisely because it's so easy to find stuff that's exactly the depth and length I'm looking for in any given moment.
To be sure, YouTube has a whole raft of problems itself. It seems to be barreling down the bullet train track to enshittification just like the rest of Alphabet, and that doesn't portend good things for something as user-driven as it is. Google Search can coast on name recognition and market penetration for much longer than YouTube, but I long ago lost faith that Sundar Pichai has an ounce of sense or feeling in his scrawny ass. I'd be pleasantly shocked if YouTube ever manages to live up to the real potential of its concept.
I was really surprised people cared so much o Reddit and the box office subreddit is so active. I was surprised that I was actually interested myself. My understanding is that the box office bombs and hits of today will have a pretty strong I pact on what gets greenlit down the line. I’m really interested to see how Disney deals with Marvel and Starwars franchises coming up with duds. For better or for worse (mostly worse I believe) it’s a pretty safe bet that film execs care about the box office numbers a whole lot more than anyone else.
I like the industry