The Corona Movie Flops: Bloodshot And Onward
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The first flop in the entire canon of Pixar movies was The Good Dinosaur, which had a torturous production history and a budget that swelled. Now, due to force majeure, Onward is the second Pixar flop — but due entirely to the coronavirus pandemic.share
While reviews have slighted Onward as a second rate Pixar product and the picture would have likely seen box office receipts lower than their usual output — there was no reason to believe that if the marketplace was not affected by a pandemic, that Onward would have pulled in profitable grosses.
The Disney marketing machine supported the movie with its full muscle and launched a global marketing blitz, which usually costs the mouse house about $150 million. Before the coronavirus wreaked havoc, iSpotTV had listed Disney’s TV ad spend at $26 million, two weeks before the March 6 opening. At least $40 million worth of TV spots would have been spent going into release and domestic P&A costs would be north of $60 million. No budget figures were released by Disney, but the film was expected to cost about $200 million.
Along with the traditional P&A push, the mouse house also partnered with Hasbro, Mattel, and Funko for merchandise, clothes, and backpacks were at Old Navy, there was a tie-in with McDonald’s and dozens of other corporations that gave exposure to Onward.
It bowed against The Way Back, landed lukewarm reviews and opened below estimates at $39,119,861 — placing #1 for the weekend. Many analysts pegged the soft numbers on the product, not the impact of the virus, which was simply ridiculous. With a portion of our society panic shopping and hoarding mountains of toilet paper, this was not a normal movie going climate.
As the second weekend was approaching, movie theaters were closing across the US and there was a huge 72.9% decline in attendance to $10,601,952 — where it won the very slow weekend. Just a few days later the box office stopped being reported and the stateside numbers were $61,555,145. Disney made the film available for rent/purchase digitally on March 20.
International numbers are at $41.6 million, bringing the global gross to $103.1. This would return about $56 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross.