14 DAY TRIAL // There is no better time of the year to release animation films or movies that are based on well-known and popular children’s stories as Christmas. On Friday, Disney premiered its much hyped 2D animation film, “The Princess and the Frog,” the first ever Disney production to feature a black princess, and scored big at the North American box office, with $20 million in ticket sales over the weekend.
Still, the Huffington Post points out that, while the debut is very strong and the movie will probably go on to make many more millions over the next couple of weeks, it’s somewhat of a letdown judging by the hype it generated in the months leading up to the release. For a film so “groundbreaking” as this one is, for featuring black characters and a story unlike any other coming from Disney, and for marking the return to traditional 2D cell animation, “The Princess and the Frog” could have fared much better, the publication says.
“In what was neither a blast-off nor a crash, ‘The Princess and the Frog’ marked Disney’s return to 2D animation with $25 million in its debut weekend in wide-release. Mid-December releases are notorious for insanely long legs. The last traditional 2D Disney cartoon to open in this slot, ‘The Emperor’s New Groove’ (the funniest toon of the decade and Eartha Kitt’s finest hour) in 2000, made 9.1x its $9.3 million opening weekend ($89.3 million). So it’s tough to ascertain long-term prospects for this one,” The Post writes.
Still, “The Princess and the Frog” stands very good chances at making history, if only for the story alone, the report goes on to say. Funny and well made, it is a film all parents should take their children to see before the end of the year, which, of course, makes it that much more probable that it will more than prove its worth in terms of ticket sales. Yet, things could have been much better, the Post moves to argue.
“The cold truth is that this opening was actually pretty weak. When you consider the publicity that this film received for its ‘groundbreaking’ African American characters and the buzz over the return to traditional 2D cell animation, I’m pretty sure Disney was hoping for at least a bigger opening than ‘Bolt’ or ‘Meet the Robinsons.’ Heck, it barely beats out the October 03 $19 million opening of ‘Brother Bear’ when adjusted for inflation ($23 million at 2009 prices). And it certainly sold fewer tickets than the various $20-$22 million openings of ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame,’ ‘Hercules,’ ‘Mulan,’ and ‘Atlantis: The Lost Empire’ back when Disney was in an alleged post-Lion King ‘slump’,” the report goes on to say.