Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Strange World crashed nearly 60% in its second weekend, earning an estimated $4.9 million. It did so while screening in more theaters – 4,174 – than any other film in North American theaters, drawing just $1,178 per screen.
The dismal second weekend follows a disastrous Thanksgiving holiday launch, in which the film failed to reach its already tepid box office projections and ended up with a ‘B’ from the market research film Cinemascore, which is unheard of for a Disney film. Strange World’s total stands at $25.5M, and it is currently on pace to become the lowest-grossing Walt Disney Animation Studios film since 2011’s Winnie the Pooh, which was the studio’s last hand-drawn animated feature. The difference was that Winnie the Pooh had a budget of around $30M; the budget of Strange World has been reported by Hollywood trades to be anywhere between $135-180M.
What’s clear at this point is that the Don Hall-directed Disney film won’t come anywhere near the top-earning animation films of 2022, including Illumination’s Minions: The Rise of Gru ($369.5M), Pixar’s Lightyear ($118.3M), Dreamworks Animation’s The Bad Guys ($97.2M) and Warner Animation Group’s DC League of Super-Pets ($93.6M). Rather, Strange World will have to work hard to top domestic releases of anime titles like Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero ($38.1M) and Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie ($34.5M), and it will be an uphill grind that becomes even more difficult with the upcoming releases of Avatar: The Way of Water and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.