The year 2023 has not been kind to Disney. Before “Wish,” Disney tried to score big during the summer with another feel-good animated story, “Elemental.” Slapped with a hefty $200,000,000 budget, the movie just managed to nab an impressive box office net of close to $500,000,000 by the end of its run. But before that, “Elemental” struggled greatly in its opening debut.
However, it’s not just Disney’s original animated films that have struggled at the box office. Many of the company’s hottest live-action properties have failed to make a worthwhile financial splash in 2023. At the beginning of the year, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” released to mediocre reviews and greatly underperformed at the box office, especially for a Marvel movie. During the summer, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” became a dramatic box office bomb after raking in less than $400,000,000 against its whopping $300,000,000 budget. Currently, another MCU feature, “The Marvels,” is also drowning at the box office.
Overall, this type of track record is not one that inspires fans to spend their holidays and weekends traveling to the theater to watch a Disney flick.
