The Disney brand might actually be even more broken than I thought. Despite only being out for a single day, The Haunted Mansion remake has VASTLY underperformed even its minimal expectations with only a $9.9M gross haul from its premiere-day box office.
Disney is going to be in SERIOUS trouble if these poor box office totals continue.
The Haunted Mansion remake is going down about as successful as Eddie Murphy’s stay at the hotel in the classic version for despite having the Disney label, being a remake of a beloved cult classic movie, and the history of the extremely famous and successful park ride behind it, the movie only grossed $9.9M at its box office premiere. And I really don’t see these box office totals getting any better.
Now, to be fair to Disney and The Haunted Mansion (2023), the movie has only been in theaters for a single day and really hasn’t had enough time to make a massive impression on fans or Disney’s bottom line just yet. Though, I will say that the newest movie is doing somewhat better with critics (2003 version: 13% on Rotten Tomatoes; 2023 version: 42% on Rotten Tomatoes), yet this version is bombing with fans (2003 version: 5.9/10 on Metacritic, 5.9 IMDb; 2023 version: 3.8 on Metacritic, 6.4 IMDb).
Also being fair to Disney, the original movie is nothing more than a cult classic (one I really do enjoy) and really never saw the overwhelming success from critic and audience reviews that warranted any more films to be made in the franchise…though, Disney making a remake of that movie is a massive blunder on their part.
Still, this movie is really sinking at the box office as despite having some pretty big actors, such as Jared Leto, Rosario Dawson, Danny Devito, Owen Wilson, Tiffany Haddish, and Jamie Lee Curtis), the film couldn’t even gross $10M at its PREMIERE BOX OFFICE SHOWING!!!
Yes, a Disney film that was made for $185M and marked with another $100M budget (most likely) had just 3%-5% of its budget recuperated on its opening night. That’s one of the most IMPORTANT nights a film like this has when trying to earn money at the box office, and especially so when its budget could be anywhere from $185M-$285M.
Anyways, I know some people will attribute the Writer’s and Actor’s Strikes as a reason why this film has underperformed its opening night expectations (the $9.9M opening has the movie now projected to only make $23M at the domestic box office opening on a prediction of $30M or more) due to the actors and writers pulling out of the movie’s marketing, interview circuits, and red carpet appearances, but I don’t think that tells the whole story.
(Disney-The Haunted Mansion-Official Teaser Trailer)
Disney itself has already seen nearly $1B in box office losses this year (and its only July for God’s sake!) with some of its biggest releases, such as Ant-Man 3, The Little Mermaid, Elemental, and Indiana Jones 5, all either flopping big time or barley making back its massive budgets at the box office.
Yet, even with all of Disney’s disappointments at the 2023 box office, only The Boogeyman (a crap 2oth Century Studios horror movie), Theater Camp (and even worse Searchlight Pictures “comedy), and Chevalier (a Searchlight Pictures theatrical drama) had worse opening weekends than The Haunted Mansion.
That’s EXTREMELY disappointing as The Haunted Mansion not only is one of the worst performing Disney films of the year, but it is also one of the worst performing Live-Action remakes of all-time as well. And if the remakes are growing stale with audiences (as they obviously are), then Disney is in big trouble as they only have remakes and sequels upcoming!
Images Source: Featured Image: (Disney) (Haunted Mansion | Official Teaser Trailer – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Disney) (Haunted Mansion | Official Teaser Trailer – YouTube)
