10 Biggest Disney Animated Box Office Bombs
The Walt Disney Company has been synonymous with animation ever since Mickey Mouse's debut in 1928's "Steamboat Willie." Almost 100 years later and Disney is not so much a little mouse but an enormous whale lunging through the media landscape and devouring properties such as Marvel, Pixar, and 20th Century Studios.
Disney's holdings are so vast that its catalog ranges from "Bambi" and "A Bug's Life" to "Predator," "Die Hard," "Family Guy," and "The Simpsons," but that doesn't mean the company hasn't tripped up. On the contrary — many Disney films have been financial blunders, even beloved works such as "Pinocchio," the initial failure of which caused Walt Disney to be, according to his friend and colleague Joe Grant, "very, very depressed."
The fortunes of "Pinocchio" have changed since its release in 1940 — numerous rereleases pulled its lifetime grosses to over $120 million — but that can't be said of other Disney productions. Here are 10 of Disney's biggest animated box office bombs.
The Good Dinosaur
Pixar hadn't known box office failure when Disney purchased it in 2006 for $7.4 billion, but no one is immune to mistakes or misfortune — not even the most beloved animator of the last 30 years. "The Good Dinosaur" made that clear.
Like with "Dumbo," the numbers are passable at face value. "The Good Dinosaur" grossed $322 million against a budget of approximately $175-200 million (Pixar does not release exact figures). However, this sum does not include marketing, which, according to The Hollywood Reporter, pushes the total budget to some $350 million.
"The Good Dinosaur" was never an auspicious project. Pixar veteran Bob Peterson was the initial director, but production issues caused his replacement by Pete Sohn, who delivered the film after a one-year delay on November 25, 2015.
Delays are rarely advantageous, but this one put "The Good Dinosaur" next to "Inside Out," which opened some five months prior. The reaction to that film was so glowingly positive that it subsumed its prehistoric relative and saved at least some face for Pixar and its Disney handlers.
The Emperor's New Groove
The turn of the 21st century was a watershed moment for mainstream animation. It marked the shift from digitally-aided illustration into full-blown computer-generated imagery. In 1995, "Toy Story" was the first feature-length CGI film, but it would take Disney's in-house animation team a decade before it released its own: "Chicken Little." In the meantime, the legacy studio continued with its slick, but now outmoded, style, and "The Emperor's New Groove" was one such example of that.
Repurposing the title of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Emperor's New Clothes," Disney's film was a hit with critics, but struggled in theaters, where it opened fourth on December 15, 2000, behind "What Women Want," "Dude, Where's My Car?," and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." By the end of its run, "The Emperor's New Groove" had grossed $169 million against its $100 million budget, which, accounting for marketing costs, meant it roughly broke even. That caused The Daily News to describe it as a "costly disappointment."
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Back in the summer of 2001, Entertainment Weekly described "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" as a "marketing and creative gamble." Disney might have pulled it off in the early 1990s, before the new wave of computer-generated imagery. However, this hand-drawn adventure yarn was an anachronism by 2001, especially compared to "Shrek" and "Monsters, Inc.," the two biggest CGI hits of the year.
Whereas "Atlantis" grossed $186 million against a $120 million budget, "Shrek" earned $492 million having spent just $60 million on production. "Monsters, Inc." was an even bigger hit with revenues of some $579 million, although its budget was almost twice that of "Shrek."
With "Atlantis: The Lost Empire," Disney was out of fashion, out of pocket, and also out of quality; critics struck a middling tone, noting the film's spectacle, but criticizing its absence of character development and logical storytelling.
Fantasia 2000
The original "Fantasia" received high praise during its 152-week release in the early 1940s. The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote that it was, "Simply terrific — as terrific as anything that has ever happened on a screen." That may be the most gleeful line of film criticism ever written, but no amount of plaudits could overpower the looming war effort, which reduced box office receipts to just $325,000.
"Fantasia" wasn't about money, though, especially not for Roy E. Disney, Walt's nephew. Roy made a case for a sequel throughout the 1980s, causing CEO Michael Eisner to test a theatrical re-release, followed by a home media campaign. The 50-year-old animated musical proved an unmitigated success, generating $25 million at the box office and 9.25 million VHS orders, providing the financial substance to Roy Disney's passion project.
Alas, "Fantasia 2000" would not enjoy such lucre. The budget came in at $80 million, and it was marked by some curious indulgences, such as a temporary, purpose-built IMAX screen costing $4 million. Most critics supported the project, but there were no lines around the block. Ultimately, after a year-long release, "Fantasia 2000" grossed $90 million, causing Eisner to dub it "Roy's folly."
Home on the Range
"Home on the Range" is a film few people saw and even fewer remember. It cost $110 million and achieved a worldwide box office of just $145 million, which Variety described as "anemic." I think the old trade magazine should have used a stronger word than that, but this was 2004, a year that hit Disney with a trifecta of box office bombs.
First was "The Ladykillers," which opened on March 26, a week prior to "Home on the Range." The film was a remake of a popular British classic and had Tom Hanks in the lead and the Coen brothers at the reins. Unfortunately, the comedy didn't gel with critics, and it was shaping up to be a box office disappointment too.
However, the outlook was positively rosy compared to "The Alamo," which crashed and burned on April 9 and grossed just $25 million before dropping out of theaters, which was not even a quarter of its eye-watering $107 million budget. Three bombs in three weeks caused Disney's market value to plunge by $1 billion.
Lightyear
Despite the golden intellectual property — the "Toy Story" franchise has grossed $3.2 billion worldwide — "Lightyear" hit Disney with losses totaling some $106 million. How could this have happened with Buzz Lightyear, one of Pixar's most popular characters? Well, having Chris Evans voice him wasn't a good start — Buzz Lightyear isn't Buzz Lightyear without Tim Allen. Then there's the whole universe-within-a-universe conceit, which Pixar exploited back in 2000 with the direct-to-video "Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins." By placing Lightyear in the film's in-world merchandise, Pixar ditched the character's endearing ingenuousness and throws him into a vapid cosmos that has only trace amounts of the energy found in the studio's earlier work. That's okay for "direct-to-video" content (which is an antiquated term in our streaming culture), but not quite enough for a full-budget feature film.
Deadline's cost breakdown shows just how disastrous "Lightyear" was. Grossing $226 million against a $200 million budget is bad enough, but don't forget the $110 million marketing bill. Along with a battery of other costs, that pushed the overall budget to an incredible $373 million.
The Black Cauldron
I've mentioned some pretty big bombs so far, but none of them raised questions about Disney's future. Enter "The Black Cauldron," which did such bad business back in the summer of 1985 that it was dubbed "the movie that almost killed Disney animation."
Adapted from "The Chronicles of Prydain," a series of children's high fantasy novels by Lloyd Alexander, "The Black Cauldron" cost $44 million to produce and grossed a middling $21 million at the box office. The failure was like a hit of smelling salts for CEO Micheal Eisner, who responded by moving the animation team to a warehouse in Glendale and stressing speed and efficiency over obsessive indulgence.
Eisner's brute force was famously successful, starting the so-called "Disney renaissance" with features such as 1991's "The Beauty and the Beast." That came in at a strict $25 million and grossed an extremely healthy $424,967,620.
Treasure Planet
"Treasure Planet" takes Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island," straps a rocket to it, and fires the 19th-century adventure story into outer space. It's a case of taking old content and wrapping it in flashy visuals, but that can't be the only reason why "Treasure Planet" grossed just $109 million against a $140 million budget.
The film's release was disastrous from the start. "Treasure Planet" opened on November 27, 2002, and took fourth place behind "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," "Die Another Day," and "The Santa Clause 2." When it left U.S. theaters on January 9, 2003, it had grossed just $38 million domestically.
Competing with the "Harry Potter" and "James Bond" franchises is never easy, but that likely isn't the only reason for the failure of "Treasure Planet." Disney CEO Michael Eisner could speak only broadly, "Either we mismarketed it, the idea wasn't appealing, or the stars were not aligned ... but one thing it did teach us: the entertainment business is fickle."
Strange World
I like aesthetic references to pulp magazines and old-fashioned science fiction, but "Strange World" does not leave the strongest impression on prospective viewers — just a vague adventure yarn centered on a superficial family with formulaic humor and threadbare pathos. Also, couldn't Disney muster a more inspiring title than "Strange World"? Such doubts explain why this film endured, to quote The Hollywood Reporter, "the worst opening for a Disney Animation Thanksgiving title in modern times."
This "worst opening in modern times" was a paltry $18.6 million, which rose to only $38 million by the end of its domestic run in February 2023 (via Box Office Mojo). International markets added another $35 million for a total of some $73 million, but that was far short of all budgetary estimates, which Deadline pegged at $135 million, and Variety a whopping $180 million. This means that "Strange World" lost Disney anywhere between $63—107 million.
Mars Needs Moms
Film industry finances are too complex and opaque to name Disney's very worst box office bomb, but there is no doubt that "Mars Needs Moms" comes close. The motion capture science fiction romp opened in 3,117 theaters on March 11, 2011, and grossed a mere $6 million over the next three days, which was Disney's worst opening weekend until "Strange World" 11 years later. By the end of its 42-week release, "Mars Needs Moms" hit $39 million against a $150 million budget, landing Disney with a loss of at least $111 million.
Critics cited numerous reasons for the film's failure, namely its characters, story, and, for some, its animation. Personally, I appreciate the realist motion capture technique; I much prefer it to the wide button noses of "Strange World," for instance. Others found it creepy, though, including British critic Robbie Collin, who suggested renaming the film "Mars Needs To Work Out How To Animate Humans So They Don't Look Like Possessed Shop Window Dummies."