Box Office: Expect More Disney Films To Skip Theaters In Favor Of Disney+

Now that Walt Disney has a guaranteed annual line-up of Marvel movies, Pixar/Disney Animation flicks, live-action remakes and year-end biggies (Star Wars or Avatar), there’s no longer room for or a need for the next Artemis Fowl or Tomorrowland in theaters.

Artemis Fowl, the Kenneth Branagh-directed adaptation of the Eoin Colfer novel (the first in a series of YA fantasy books) was initially scheduled for August of 2019 before it was tossed to May 29, 2020, with Maleficent: Mistress of Evil going from May 29, 2020 to October of 2019. And now with the entire theatrical calendar in flux, Disney is instead releasing the $130 million adventure as a Disney+ original. Absent the more high-profile news of Black Widow and Mulan getting new theatrical release dates, thus debunking rumors about them going straight to VOD or Disney+, the news of Artemis Fowl going straight to Disney+ probably would have made a bigger splash. It’s both shocking and not that surprising, and I expect more theoretical Disney theatrical titles to become Disney+ releases.

While Artemis Fowl may be very good, the odds were commercially very much against it. If you recall, Warner Bros. sold Andy Serkis’ Mowgli to Netflix in late 2018, which in WB’s case was the equivalent of disposing of a time bomb before it went off. It was a pretty good Jungle Book movie, but it was commercially doomed. Ditto the excellent Annihilation (which went to Netflix in most overseas territories) and the not-so-excellent The Cloverfield Paradox (which went to Netflix and then debuted as a “surprise” movie after Superbowl 2018). Yes, the coronavirus-related delays provided a certain excuse/cover for what otherwise would have been a brutal admission of arguable failure. Generally speaking, big-budget theatrical franchise-starters don’t end up on streaming unless they just aren’t working.

Bob Iger confirmed in an interview with Barrons yesterday that, yes, we could see more planned Disney theatricals instead debuting on Disney+. While we can speculate on what that means for Angelina Jolie’s The One and Only Ivan (still dated for August 14 alongside Wonder Woman 1984), Peter Jackson’s The Beatles Get Back documentary (due theatrically on September 20), a filmed stage production of Hamilton (due in theaters October 15, 2021) and, heaven forbid, Pixar’s Soul (still technically scheduled for June 19), I would wager that comment was more about films merely in development at this juncture. After all, Disney+ was always intended to be a safe outlet for the kind of Disney movies that aren’t as theatrically viable as they once were before audiences began flocking to streaming and VOD.

Tom McCarthy’s (delightful) Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made would have potentially been a mild hit just five or six years ago, like Miguel Arteta’s (charming and empathetic) adaptation of Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day ($66.95 million domestic and $100.65 million worldwide against a $28 million budget) in late 2014. While Julia Hart’s adaptation of Stargirl may have seemed somewhat stuck in the early 2000’s (which is when the novel was first written), it’s easy to imagine the film being a small-scale hit 15-20 years ago, if not more recently. In 2007, a star-driven original like Wild Hogs could earn $253 million worldwide on a $60 million budget. In 2020, it’s almost impossible to imagine anything original A) costing $60 million and B) earning over $250 million global.

We slam Disney for retreating to the world of IP, remakes, nostalgia and safe franchise plays, but we moviegoers are to blame. If we had shown up to, relatively speaking, to A Wrinkle in Time, Tomorrowland, McFarland, USA, The Finest Hours, and/or Queen of Katwe, we’d probably getting more originals, studio programmers or “new to cinema” franchises alongside the Marvel movies, the animated sequels and the live-action remakes. Disney+ was partially intended as a safe home for exactly those kind of films, albeit obviously at a cheaper budgetary level than Brad Bird’s $190 million fantasy or Ava DuVernay’s $103 million adventure. I’d argue that Artemis Fowl and The One and Only Ivan, barring surprising box office results, were intended to be the last of their kind in terms of theatrical release versus Disney+.

The “next” Queen of Katwe or McFarland, USA is probably going to debut on Disney+, just as the “next” Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day ended up on Disney+. Presuming Disney’s current theatrical brands maintain a certain level of financial health, there is barely reason for the Mouse House to risk financial peril with anything “new” in theaters. If Marvel can provide three or four movies, with Disney Animation and Pixar providing two-to-three titles and a mega-movie year-end flick (either Star Wars or Avatar between 2021 and 2027) thriving alongside a few live-action remakes or “new” fantasy titles like Cruella, Indiana Jones 5 and Jungle Cruise, that’s already nearly a dozen releases per year. Add in a few 20th Century offerings alongside a few Searchlight Oscar contenders, and that’s an annual slate.

As long as Marvel continues to diversify in terms of genre (while concurrently supplanting the franchises of its rivals), then you can argue Disney is releasing a few specific genre movies that take place in a singular universe. I am curious to what extent Destin Daniel Cretton’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is Marvel’s version of a Disney underdog sports story just as Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man were the MCU equivalent of Flubber or The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. As long as the 20th Century/Searchlight releases are at least somewhat “for adults,” then at least some of Disney’s theatrical slate will be more than just kid-targeted tentpoles. Otherwise, it’s just a question of how Disney tries to “diversify” their other theatrical offerings, be it the Pixar toons, the Star Wars flicks or the live-action remakes.

That’s partially how Disney ruled the box office in 2019. Captain Marvel was the “girl-powered” sci-fi actioner (sorry, Alita), Avengers: Endgame was the ultimate summer movie blockbuster tentpole, Aladdin was the ethnically diverse musical romance, Toy Story 4 was the mid-life crisis comedy, The Lion King was the African Shakespeare-ish tragedy (Lion King was initially pitched as, among other things, “Disney’s Hamlet”), Maleficent: Mistress of Evil was the future camp classic and Frozen II was both the YA fantasy adventure and the family-centric toon of the Thanksgiving season. Throw in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker as the year-end tentpole, and you have essentially offered something for everyone and the go-to “worth seeing in a multiplex” flick for periodic moviegoers who only see five or six films in theaters per year.

Netflix and Disney were positioned as arch-rivals and yet proved to be each other’s best friends. Netflix conditioned the world to consider only the biggest and safest IP-driven movies as multiplex-worthy, while Disney positioned itself as the biggest/best provider of exactly that kind of movie. So when we start to see, over the next few years, films that once would have been Disney theatricals going to Disney+, it won’t be a surprise. It’ll be an acknowledgment of market-based realities and the sheer amount of guaranteed theatrical tentpoles in a given year. When you’ve got Marvel movies, Star Wars/Avatar movies, Pixar/Disney Animation biggies, live-action remakes and a few adult-skewing or award season offerings from 20th Century, there’s little reason to stick your neck out for a a Tron 3 or a Mouse Guard.