I hate to say it, but I knew it.
Yesterday’s guesstimates for weekend numbers on “Onward” and “The Way Back” were inflated to make things look better than they were.
Disney said “Onward” made $40 million. As it turns out, the Pixar film made just $39.1 million. That’s big difference. Disney was trying to avoid headlines about “worst Pixar showing since 2015.” But that’s what it was. Now they wait for “Mulan” on March 27th.
That extra $900,000 that didn’t happen– those were children whose parents didn’t want to risk exposure to illness. It had nothing to do with the movie’s relative qualities.
Also: Warners wanted “The Way Back” to be at $8.5 million. It was really $8.1 million. It was still Ben Affleck’s worst showing in two decades. And it was another disaster for Warner’s marketing films to adults. That makes “The Way Back” the 12th or 13th in a row over the last year and few months.
And that, folks, is entertainment.
