Why Wish Flopped (Hint: It's Disney's Fault) 

They played it way too safe and predictable. They should have pushed the watercolor art style waaaay further. And there were interesting story ideas in the art book that got cut!

Imagine how much fun fans would have if they kept the ideas of Star being a Peter Pan style character or the king and queen being evil Gomez and Morticia Addams, especially with the story and cosplayers.

It honestly reminds me of the 2000s. Some might not remember because the internet wasn't as prevalent and in your face, but in the 2000s, Disney was pretty hated, and it was considered uncool to like Disney. Some of that was because the movies were okay to subpar, but part of it was also that Pixar and Dreamworks were making mince meat out of them. Shrek was the final nail in the coffin, with that movie making Disney a complete laughing stock. You could consider that recent South Park episode the modern day Shrek jab.

Oh what a tragedy. The bullying conglomerate that has destroyed copyright law in the United States has suffered such a terrible year on its 100th anniversary.

I'm so tired of Disney. They own basically every major movie production and their leadership jas just ruined almost all of them.

I think the live action remakes really destroyed the company's reputation. A movie being "the new Disney movie" used to be enough to justify watching a trailer and maybe even going to see it on whim. Nowadays it just generates an "oh" from me. I haven't watched the Wish trailer, and I don't care enough to look it up.

Disney+ kind of ruined disney honestly. Since 2020 i would assume most people dont bother seeing it in theaters because they know it will be on D+ in a couple of months

I think it’s Disney’s own actions that are hurting its reputation. I don’t think it’s because of the Disney Adults meme. Disney has been on the wrong side of the WGA strike and one of its most vocal opponents. That hurt the brand in a significant way!

If you look at the structure of the company, a lot of the institutional creative people that were there during the Disney Renaissance and Pixar days don't work there anymore. I went through some of their employees recently, and was shocked to see how little experience a lot of these people have. Therefore, it makes sense to me why their recent movies just don't seem to meet the high quality standard that Disney is known for. It also doesn't help that I think they're actively scared of creating fresh and original stories and innovating their animation. It's sad that Encanto (2021) seems to be their last cultural hit. Everything that's come out afterwards has just not lived up their own standards.

Went to see it with my 5 and 7 year old girls and I'll tell you what is wrong with this movie from a kids perspective. They establish the villian right away and instead of having the middle half an hour be fun and everything. He's scary and chasing her for the whole last hour of the movie. My 7 year old had to sit in my lap and didn't have a lot of fun for a lot of the movie. The 5 year old liked it but she's into creepy stuff, idk. I think the concept was fine, the execution of the story could have been better.

Not being offensive but literally ZERO of my Disney adult friends have seen this film. Some of them even work there! Crazy!

I think Disney needs to focus more on getting back to its roots. Focus on 2D animitation and fairytales for awhile. There are SO MANY fairytales and legends from all around the world that they could explore and be both diverse and embracing the heritage of the company. I think if they want to win people back they need to take a step back and remember what made it the success it once was. Also, they need to back off the franchises, the fatigue is real, even beyond Marvel and Star Wars.

I don't dislike Disney for its messaging. I dislike how insincere and transparently profit-focused it is.

Wish looks mediocre. This movie apparently cost 200M $ and you see none of it. If it were an experimental low budget movie that tries a new artstyle, then I could see merit in it. Disney is now just another animation studio.

I've heard that they were going to make it as a traditional 2D animated film, but they gave up on 2D animation for this, because it was "too hard". It wasn't too hard in the 1930's, but it's too hard now?!

Wish's animation feels like its 95% complete. But animation is one of those things where it's either 100% to be good, or else its bad.

When it comes to Napoleon I think a huge factor is the historical aspect and also fascination with war history. It’s more “real” considering current events.

How pathetic is it though that Elemental & ENCANTO did better afterwards than WISH has done in the few years leading up to WISH release. Also to add insult to injury a short film did circles around it

The only problem my friends is that no animated film should EVER cost 200 million dollars! The whole point of making something animated is to tell amazing, visually stunning stories on a budget. Using 100 percent cgi for animation is a slippery slope of cost. If this was traditional animation it would have cost like 25 million or less. Then it might be easily profitable with minimal risk.

You know what insane about this whole situation is that Disney will just blame the fans and move on to making the same old trash. It's not Disney, its the fans, that's the mindset.

This is no surprise to anyone except Disney.

They do have so many things going against them. They got into politics; social messaging in lieu of focusing on plots; putting people in charge of franchises who don't like them (the Marvel director, Zegler and Brie Larson don't seem to), and who want to change them--irritating their core audience that made them valuable; poor movies, superhero fatigue, bad economy, streaming competition, people not going to theatres because of covid. But they can get out of politics and make good movies. That's in their control. Arrogant to not think they need to do that.

I think if Disney really wanted to celebrate its 100th Anniversary, they should've went all out, and made a fully hand drawn feature film. They already brought back their 2D animation department, so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to make this decision. Would it have been risky? Sure, but people have been asking for this particular medium to return for decades at this point. And if their "safe" movies aren't doing that well anymore, then they should go all out, and take risks again. Besides, if anime films can do well at the B.O., then so can Disney if they know what they're doing.

I want them to go back to 2D animation with fables, legends and fairy tales from Africa, Asia and South America. They recreated amazing European tales, let's do the same for other parts of the world and create diversity projects that aren't just swapping for a token black character

The thing is Disney AdultsTM aren't mocked for liking Disney movies, they're mocked for liking *Disney.* They fork over tons of money to a greedy company to feel the illusion of childhood, and god forbid you challenge the brand- I mean, The Magic.

I have a lot of respect for Britney’s content. It’s tough to be critical of these massive properties without being labelled as politically motivated. I find she keeps it fair and strait. Absolutely correct about Disney’s waning influence, especially amongst the generation that went from being nerds about it to just being strait up poindexters about it.

I heard the animators couldn't draw horses walking. Disney animators can't draw horses! One of the most featured animals in their movies!

I think Disney is just plain lazy, they keep saying they will try to make better films but they only proved that their writing is as bland as a piece of bread. Even that new art piece they put out for thanks giving that's been floating around is made with AI, they didn't even bother hiring a artist to draw it which proves how lazy they have become. 🙄

I'd also like to add that I didn't see any substantial advertising for the movie. I didn't see any advertisements that showed any interesting plot points to gain engagement for the movie. I only saw the king singing and the main character looking at the sky

Wish should have had a romance in it. It was supposed to represent 100 years of Disney and their first princess film, Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs, Cinderella (which saved the company), and Tangled and Frozen (very popular CGI princess movies) all had a romance in it to some extent. It would have made the story be more of an ode to Disney's past.

You're the first to mention the effect of disney+ on overall Disney content. I think a whole discussion could be made on this topic. I think disney simply does not know how to use this medium. It goes way beyond diluting the brand. * take Netflix. They understand the need to have content constantly rotating. Netflix may introduce a quantity of old John Wayne movies & keep them for x-many months. Then remove them. Even rotating old material keeps it fresh. While Disney can only keep it fresh by creating something new. That would be unsustainably exhausting. * by not renting old content to other streaming services, they've lost that rent money. It all just sits on Disney+ not bringing in more revenue. * 2 years is too long between seasons. This is okay for movies, because the audience can easily watch the first movie to reconnect with the characters. Streaming seasons are basically a 10 hour movie. They can't expect the audience to be that committed.

Originally, I was curious to watch WISH in theaters since the animation reminded me of Spider-Verse. But once the goat started talking about its booty, I lost interest immediately because it was so cringy. Plus, I stopped supporting Disney after how Bob Iger handled himself during the Hollywood strike.

Massive changes need to made at both Walt Disney Animation & Pixar now after Lightyear, Strange World & Wish all major Disney Box Office bombs!

I'm an adult, and still love to watch Disney's old animated films. It's just that their recent films (star wars, MCU, animated, etc.) haven't been grabbing my attention; and if it does, I'm only disappointed because the story and characters don't really work

Disney has lost Gen Z. Disney has lost adult fans of their previous products. Disney has lost Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Willow, and Marvel fans. Disney has lost, and it's all because of Bob Iger and his hunger to be president.

I hope that Wish serves as a wakeup call for a shakeup like what Iger did to Eisner in the 2000s, and that instead of slating more sequels they go back to their roots and focus on making a handful of really good movies to regain audience trust. My mom is a NYT bestselling author--which is to say she knows good writing from bad--and when we went to go see Disney movies she'd say, "of course it'll be well written and good, it's Disney's writers behind it". Watching her go from that assured attitude to utter distrust was wild.

Solo - Flop Mulan - Flop Onward - Flop Luca - Flop Jungle Cruise - Flop Elemental - Flop Lightyear - Flop Dial of Destiny - Flop Strange World - Flop Little Mermaid - Flop Ant-Man - Flop Raya - Flop Soul - Flop Haunted Mansion - Flop The Marvels - Flop Wish - Flop The only Disney movies to not flop in the last three years have been Dr Strange 2, Thor 4, Guardians 3, & Black Panther 2... Notice that they are all sequels based on franchises from the good MCU days. Encanto did okay, but not great. And Cruella is an unknown... probably broke even ish.

well they scrapped the original better idea of a villian couple/ asha having a love interest in the form of Star which looked way more intersting.. but ..disney hates romance now for some reason. I think disney deserves this considering their distane for all their other animated movies

The studio once acclaimed for its innovation, creativity, and imagination has become creatively bankrupt. Their big centennial has become their worst year since their "dark days" pre-Eisner. Disney needs to clean house and go back to focusing on quality over quantity, halving the number of movies. They need to go back to being that innovative studio, even if it means going back to square one. I love Disney and its still my dream to work for them someday, but the last few years has been a joke for them.

Also the creatives dislike them, like it’s so shocking how safe they’re playing EVERYTHING, ghosh…remember how dark the hunchback of Notre Dame was? And even the less dark stuff like The Emperors New Groove was original and experimental and TOOK RISKS Damn…I’m so tilted about what this company has become…when your concept art has people more intrigued than what ends up in theatres…you need to reevaluate who gets to have the final say on what Edit: spelling

Only reason why I keep disney+ is for the early- mid 2000s and earlier disney movies. Otherwise the Disney we knew is long dead.

It's so sad to see how far Disney has fallen. And the fact that Wish was released in the middle of all this mess makes me even more sad.

I used to go watch every disney movie in theaters during the 2010s. Even if there was a chance the movie was mid, most of them were pretty good. But now there's no reason to go anymore. Tickets are too expensive and the stories are boring. The characters are not relatable and it just doesnt make me feel something anymore. I felt something when i watched Frozen for the first time, or tangled, or Moana, or Encanto or heck even Raya. But nowadays it just feels too fake and fabricated.

Disney doesn’t know how to reliably tell a story anymore. The few breakouts in recent years have been exceptions, and likely a fluke. The no-true-villain, diluted or no romance, often very weak stories / hero’s journey arcs overall… it just doesn’t motivate me to scrape together $50 to automatically see things in theaters anymore. In my opinion they’ve not only destroyed their own brand, but a huge sector of the entertainment industry by pumping out continuous Ali Baba quality movies with very few exceptions in the last decade. Btw - I used to be a Disney super fan, and am still a stock holder.

It also doesn't help that the animation looks like a pre-vis. Like, this was released when the animators had just about got a handle on the characters, and were about to start working out the fine-tuned lighting and rendering passes, and corporate just said, "Nah, it's fine!"

And Asha has the same copy paste personality as their recent females, they all act and behave the exact same way.

Wow. You know what did better? Atlantis: the Lost Empire at $20 million 22 years ago. Wow.

No compelling message. At the heart of pop culture, you need a compelling message (e.g. Finding Nemo [suburban parenting], Lion King [claiming an inheritance])

You know what I want Disney to do? 1. Get a better CEO 2. Stay out of Politics 3. Pay your workers! 4. Get better creatives or let your creatives do their job!

"Strange World" got a "B??" That's really amazing for how crap the story was in that one.

Right now Trolls band together is almost at $200 million at the box office, Disney must be ashamed to be losing to Trolls.

Brittney's videos are 1,000 times more entertaining than 2023 Disney.

They should've hired people with creative skills and talents not shallow self-centred activists

Wish was the culmination of all the quality issues that Disney has been having for the past several years. People are fed up with the company thinking they will ALWAYS have an audience & they don't have to work to get their support. Disney has had some awful business practices recently and now are failing to put out quality products so it's really not worth it for anyone.

This should've been their opportunity to give us something truly spectacular and groundbreaking, I was hoping the fact that it's their 100th Anniversary would convince Disney to really take a chance on something revolutionary that would change the game much like The Little Mermaid did back in 1989. Sadly they used this opportunity to play it safe and give us "easter eggs" instead (when they're not even really easter eggs because they're super obvious and in-your-face). What Disney used to be, it seems like Sony has become now with the Spiderverse films. Even the villain in the new Spiderverse movie seems to be a metaphor for Sony itself, the guy we laughed at for having the bagel thrown at him in the background becoming a force to be reckoned with, much like how we laughed at Sony for making the Emoji Movie 6 years ago only to turn around and beat Disney at its own game just a year later. In the realm of animation, it seems like Disney is Sears, the once untouchable and unstoppable cultural force for several generations that rested on its laurels and got complacent, collapsing in the face of newer, more dynamic competition that's not afraid to disrupt the old rules of the game, with Sony in this case acting like Amazon.

So I’m a travel agent and I can get some good deals. Disney is offering some fairly good deals right now trying to get people to visit the parts and yet none of my clients are interested. It’s sad because it used to be a place that was on peoples bucket lists but now it’s not. I’m even hearing that they have removed some of the elements people loved like the lighting of the castle. Apparently, and this is just what I heated from another travel agent, they are projecting lights onto the castle still instead of decorating like they used to. Not sure what’s going on there but I hope it’s not true. Guests don’t want to pay big bucks to see a projection.

I don't trust their content for children anymore. I took my kids to Trolls last weekend

I would be more excited for Brave and Encanto sequels or even cross overs. Seriously though Disney hasn’t made anything decent in the last few years. EDIT: Also thank you for always having genuine opinions that aren’t politically motivated. You have unbiased and decent opinions. Thank you.

If Disney made a movie that was genuinely unironically good again, would the Internet even care?

Agreeing with other commenters - Disney adults have money to save - I’ll just wait for it to be on Disney+ 🤷‍♀️ Also films like Napoleon means big explosions, sounds maybe gore, impactful orchestral soundtrack. All things that will have so much more value watching it in cinema than animated films maybe other than old Studio Ghibli?

I'm excited for Elio--I was at the company a year ago, Elio legitimately now sits in the position to save the company's reputation

It’s interesting because every studio has had major flops this year, it’s like something has changed with movie theater attendance.

It's kinda expected for movies like Ruby Gillman to flop. But a disney animated feature to celebrate 100 years of disney??? They truly reach the lowest point. That, or people just prefer to catch it on disney plus

Disney Adults have always been cringy. But i feel the same about everyone at Comicon. Guess I'm just judgemental, I don't get it. Anyone that gets that involved in just one single idea seems so weird to me. Whether it's the super psycho football fan or the 40 year old that still dresses like a punk rocker.... It's like, why? Why has this become your whole identity? Seems so weird to me. I'm friends with people like this, it's not that big deal. I just don't get it.

Because napoleon is ACTUALLY WORTH WATCHING over wish. Disney has lost the plot and the audience totally, get over it.

Think about an animated movie that cost $270 million to make. No built sets, no live actors, no expense of on location filming. And it cost more to make than the live action Cinderella. There was virtually no oversight from Disney in the making of this film. The animators were so inexperienced that well-known reviewers noted the poor quality of the animation. Think about $270 million in wasted dollars. Think about hungry kids in America. Think about the problem of homelessness. They spent $400 million on Snow White, which at this point is not showable. They spent close to $350 million on The Marvels. The obscenity of this kind of wasted money is not lost on the public, which is now being told that they must pay increased fees to go to Disney parks and increased costs for food and hotels to cover the losses on these films. The average family cannot afford a visit to a Disney park, and yet the waste goes on. And these productions continue unabated, with the public and shareholders bearing the cost. This is what people are mad about. By the way, I am a shareholder.

Controversy is one thing, trying to please either side is the real problem. Especially now a day there is no middle ground at all.

I struggle to care about most of Disney products anymore. I WISH for them to capitalize on their dreamt-of Modern Audience. But I just refuse to give a damn anymore. They hated on their own fans for long enough and it's just past me to watch their content without scrutiny.

Well you did predict this would be a flop. I hadn't seen it but I'm hoping to see a movie this weekend

Frankly speaking, Disney's and Diney+W movies and shows these days have built-in 'Hazard' sign engraved in parents' minds. They are supposed to serve our entertainment needs, not us serving and fulfilling and financing their agenda. Bringing children to watch Disney movies at the cinema nowadays doesn't sound like a wise decision, at least for me. Subscribing to Disney+W for home entertainment is not a wise decision for mainstream parents with very young children

I'm going to be fairly offensive: This movie felt so generic by just looking at the promo materials that I'd rather watch a Direct to video "The Princess and The Frog" sequel made with Adobe Flash. And now, being truly offensive... I thought it was a Dreamworks move. And as for going to the cinema rather than waiting for D+... I just can't deal with little kids crying and kicking the seats, or even worse, parents having to explain them the entire movie in their densest prose while being louder than the kid, who is actually the smart one (as long as they are not kicking my seat) and could do with a short explanation.

It’s very strange to think that in 2019, just 4 years ago, Disney had their biggest year ever with like three or four billion-dollar hits in a row. Encanto was also a pretty big hit with audiences (covid notwithstanding) and that was just 2 years ago. Yet the last two years have been so bad it feels like they’ve been on the decline for a decade. The live-action remakes probably didn’t help either.

By all logistics, a movie is considered a flop when it doesn't earn a profit, but the overall earnings can still be slightly above the budget. A box office bomb is when a film's budget is more than what it actually earned. A box office bomb by itself is already a terrible situation for the studio, but imagine it being so bad that it goes below $100 million. That's when problems REALLY start forming.

I mean if a movie’s villain song is a snooze fest it’s an indicator

Disney has kept releasing garbage, insulting fans, and being political, and the Disney adults have been acting like nothing's happening which is why people scoff at rhem. Top that with how it's popular now to mock politics and its a recipe for disaster

Apathy is death. - Kreia

Corporate execs and marketing run the studios, not the creatives. That's why so many tentpole movies are just blah. People are getting sick to death of them. Every exec is afraid to take risks. It's all safe box checking rather than making a great film and people attending in droves because it's a great film.

James Gunn already works for the competition but he's also floundering over there.

My high school geometry teacher loved Disney so much and I couldn’t stand him. That’s where my hatred for Disney started.

I was a Disney kid, and have great nostalgia for the 90s theme parks. I do not like this thing that they call "the magic". As far as I understood it, this movie was supposed to create some new lore about "the magic" that ties the earlier films together, or something. That's not something that anyone was asking for. "The magic" is a vision that started with Walt Disney and was about top tier customer experiences. That's what people want. I dunno, I am cynical and this movie sounded particularly lazy and manipulative. Maybe it's better than it looks.

i miss old disney, nowadays the film are quite generic and safe, where in the 90s they didn't were much afraid to talk about dark themes or experiments like fantasia, with a delicate touch of animation and narrative. Now it's mainly for make moneys unfoetunately. I heard that the 1st ideas for wish was to make a 2d animated movie but obviously they were scared it didn't sell well

i miss evil bad guys :(

Kingdom Heartless pulled a Humpty Dumpty!

Disney got stupid so people moved on. They pissed off every fan base except the non-existent modern audience. The core issue is crap writing.

I love Disney but this year is not its year like the quality in some films and series yikes it not just that but it showed in the writing and storytelling ahhhh

I think part of the problem is that everyone knows what a great Disney film looks like, so even if their movie is "just okay" that really shouldn't be good enough for a brand like Disney.

When the villain is actually a caution king 💀 who lets his people live freely in his kingdom.💀💀

The $ is going to GROCERIES. People will catch it on streaming.

This is probably going to sound controversial, and feel free to disagree but if Disney ever gets better leadership in the future, I think they should consider giving Wish another chance. I don’t mean as like a live action remake, I think Wish should still be animated but give it back the story it was supposed to have since it sounded promising (an evil couple and a Star God-manic pixie dream boy love interest for Asha) and the fact that it was supposed to be in traditional 2D animation. I just feel really bad for the writers and original animators that had that version scrapped because the higher ups at Disney said no to them. I know all of this sounds unrealistic, but if Disney ever goes through a big change and starts thinking about quality over quantity, they should try remaking Wish into the movie it was meant to be.

I remember telling a friend “Saw the movie wishf” And they asked me: “… What’s Wish?”

How were Luca and Soul flops,they didn't even come out in theaters because of COVID?

I’m Repulsed by Disney as this point…

Was watching the news this morning and they did a short entertainment report of this finally realizing that their movies were flopping and need to change their direction. Im like hmmmmm took this long to finally realize it😂 thats a big problem

When I went to see the movie, it was mostly only adults in the theatre. Also, people just don’t go to the movie theatre anymore. Turnout is not the same anymore.

Also when people finds out that Disney shut down Blue Sky, they started to hate Disney

The main reason is that Disney are on a streak of crappy movies. Back in the days people knew that Disney wouldn't never miss two times in a row, whereas now most of their movies are mid at best.

Brand Fatigue.

2:31 Oh disney knows they can't get into the teenager segment, they don't even try. They've always gone for hardcore imprinting for kids and young mommies to ensare a new cohort of watchers, but finally that seems to be failing

I just have the feeling that there is something missing. I do wish that the concept of the star being a shapeshifter and having a human form made it. because 1. ITS JUST SO COOL 2. the star wouldn't reek of marketable plushie syndrome

After they got Spectacular Spider-Man canceled I can honestly sat I'm happy for every bad thing that has ever happened to Disney.