After its debut on Wednesday, November 23, Disney's
Meanwhile, the company's newest Marvel installment, "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever", brought in an impressive $64 million from U.S. theaters during the Thanksgiving weekend, despite being in its second week in theaters.
Due to its poor performance, "Strange Worlds" is expected to lose more than $100 million of its $135 million budget at the box office.
However, "Strange Worlds" is far from alone in the list of disappointing box office results. The movie might be underperforming, but it still scored second place for holiday sales, topped only by the new "Black Panther". The next highest earners each brought in less than $10 million in sales.
One film not included in the tally is Netflix's
While there has been some recovery over the past year, movie-going is still down compared to its pre-pandemic levels. During this Thanksgiving weekend, Americans spent around $121 million on movie tickets. Before 2020, the five-day holiday period usually saw more than $250 million in sales.
During the pandemic, the number of family films being debuted in theaters dropped, meaning opportunities to show trailers for new films in theaters have also dried up. Audiences also started expecting new Disney content to only be released on the company's streaming platform, further dampening theater turnout for Disney animated features.
"No question a slow overall marketplace and a lack of awareness building horsepower for 'Strange World' hurt its potential to follow in the tradition of the long line of Disney animated hits over this very important holiday weekend in theaters," Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian said.
However, the failure of "Strange Worlds" can't be entirely blamed on the pandemic. After all, when "Encanto" was released over the Thanksgiving weekend last year, it brought in $27 million during its three-day open and $40 million for the full holiday weekend.
One person who's likely to receive a lot of the blame for "Strange Worlds"'s poor performance is Bob Chapek, Disney's recently fired CEO.
During his three years at the company, Chapek made many controversial decisions, including restructuring the company to take power away from creative leads. It was also Chapek's decision to release several animated films straight to Disney+.
Chapek was replaced as the head of Disney by the company's former CEO, Bob Iger. After hand-selecting Chapek as his successor, Iger seemed to sour on the new CEO and his criticisms of Chapek were known amongst Disney executives.
