Disney’s latest animated offering, Strange World, arrived in cinemas over the Thanksgiving weekend and ironically became one of their biggest turkeys in terms of box office success. The film was expected to pull in a similar amount of money to last year’s Encanto, which was by no means a runaway hit but did become huge once it arrived on Disney+ during the festive period. According to Strange World star Gabrielle Union, the movie’s poor performance is due to the Covid pandemic having accustomed people to watching things in the comfort of their own home. Speaking to Variety at the Gotham Awards, Union commented:

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While Strange World has no shortage of talent in its voice cast, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Lucy Liu and Union, the film’s LGBTQ+ themes have caused some issues for the movie and led to a barrage of low review scores. With a 64% audience approval score and as the first Disney animation since 1991 not to be given at least an A- by CinemaScore, the film has not been given the kind of word-of-mouth boost that it really needed.

“I don’t know, I think people get comfortable watching things at home.”

However, as a movie that doesn’t seem to have the instant charm of Frozen, or musical dexterity of Encanto, it is not surprising that many have simply chosen to wait a month for the movie to arrive on Disney+ to, as Union says, watch in the comfort of their own homes without the increasing cost of taking a family to theaters for a non-franchise film.

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With a budget of around $130 million, Strange World has some way to go after logging just $18.6 million domestically over the weekend before it gets anywhere close to breaking even. While there is no doubt that there will be plenty of people tuning in to catch the movie once it is released on Disney+.

This happened when Disney released Encanto this time last year, although that movie did enough to make a reasonable profit at the box office. However, it didn’t become a worldwide phenomenon until it arrived on Disney+ and picked up a much larger audience. Whether Strange World can repeat that kind of success is yet to be seen, but it has raised a valid worry for Disney Animation in the future.

During the early stages of the pandemic, Disney released the movies Onward and Soul on Disney+ without a theatrical release, with both movies performing really well on the platform. While it is a given that should Disney release Frozen 3, or Toy Story 5, they would be looking at a huge box office return, and there is now a real question mark over how effective the theatrical release of new animated movies that are not already part of a franchise are. With the likes of Lightyear struggling to make an impact at the box office, the future of Disney Animation and Pixar releases in cinemas could be something that finds itself as a rarity rather than the norm.