Imagine this scenario: “Despicable Me 2” opened on Wednesday, same as “The Lone Ranger.” And now the former film has made just about $100 million more than the latter. Yikes. “The Lone Ranger” will finish today with approximately 48.3 million. That’s at least $12 million less than Disney hoped for at the high, and over a million less than their low.
Oh well — the writing was on the wall when everyone saw the movie early last week. “Despicable Me 2” now has almost $300 million internationally, making it a welcome relief for Universal Pictures. But for Disney, as everyone has now noted, this is a serious disaster with repercussions.
But this is the summer of disasters. Just look at “White House Down” and “After Earth.” You can only hope that scripts, not just budgets, will be looked at a lot more closely in the future for big studio releases.
