Treasure Planet Us Box Office

All strategically held for November release. At first glance, it looks as if Disney did it again in 2022: The company took the top two box-office spots for the holiday week. But while

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a clear holdover success, still the top theatrical release weeks after its launch, things are less rosy for its Disney stablemate, Strange World. The newest movie from Disney Animation managed to bring in just $12 million over the weekend, for a five-day total well under $20 million. (By contrast, the Thanksgiving weekend record-holder,

Treasure

, made $93 million on its opening weekend — and even the comparative Pixar flop The Good Dinosaur managed a $55 million domestic Thanksgiving opening.)

Disney's Bomb 'treasure Planet' Was Way Ahead Of Its Time

It’s as if this new fantasy adventure flopped as some kind of perverse 20th-anniversary tribute to Treasure Planet, which came out over the same holiday weekend in 2002, and also failed to clear that low $20 million bar. That’s rare for Disney theatrical animation in general: Movies that eked out bigger first-weekend numbers include the studio’s instantly forgotten 2004 singing-cow musical

(a bit more successful, but still considered an also-ran) make the case for one constant: Disney Animation doesn’t do well with fantastical adventure cartoons. But why?

In particular uses considerable visual imagination to prop up some blandly adapted characters, ultimately failing to rethink its famous source material. But all three have their charms, including design work that makes them impressive big-screen experiences. (Unlike, again,

Lucasfilm Teases Live Action 'treasure Planet' After 'ahsoka'

Speaks its environmental themes a little too clearly and obviously at times, but it’s a playful sci-fi exploration with a cool twist.

It’s possible that the visual elements distinguishing these movies are exactly what’s helping alienate them from general audiences. All three films could be described as retro-futuristic:

Animators love these kinds of retro-futurist worlds, packed with art deco cities, kaiju-like creatures, and soaring dirigibles. Steampunk and spacepunk offer a sense of animation’s limitless possibilities, including the ability to create and populate worlds on a scale that simply wouldn’t be feasible or convincing on a live-action budget. It’s probably no coincidence that both

What Went Wrong: Treasure Planet

Include a shapeshifting blob as a supporting character: Both characters read as eager attempts to push beyond the usual cute-animal sidekicks and into more imaginative, flexible, change-driven realms.

But for general, contemporary audiences, the retro-futuristic aesthetic has never really taken hold of the popular imagination, whether it’s infused with steampunk technology, sci-fi ideas, or pulp-magazine adventure. Audiences flock to fantastic adventures in straighter historical settings, from

Animators’ interest in pursuing this specific kind of old-timey adventure story points to another potential problem. It’s the kind of material traditionally marketed toward boys, even if it obviously isn’t exclusively enjoyed by them. But Disney periodically seems to be in denial over (or just impatient about) how much of its fan base is made up of younger girls, and how many of its biggest successes come when it openly aims stories at them.

Why Treasure Planet Became One Of Disney's Most Expensive Failures Ever

Aren’t “girl-only” movies, but broadly speaking, Disney still markets its princess-style movies clearly, with a specific demographic positioning in mind. It’s understandable that the studio’s creative teams want to play around with genre and setting, and escape the established Disney formulas; a studio cannot survive on princesses alone. But the majority of animated Disney films that have achieved creative and commercial success have revolved around memorable female characters — characters with broader appeal and more relatable problems than the generations of daddy issues at the heart of

Do still stem from the movies themselves. Before their respective releases, they both looked like big swings from Disney — refreshing changes of pace that audiences would likely follow, at least to some degree, based on the Disney reputation. In retrospect, they look more like harbingers of bumpy transition.

TREASURE

In 2002 inadvertently offered a one-two punch confirming that the ambitions of Disney’s later-’90s movies would not always produce financial success on the level of its early-’90s smashes. The smaller, looser, more idiosyncratic comedy of

Your Thoughts On

Proved more appealing to audiences than the more abstract draws of big, strange, unfamiliar worlds. That same dynamic may be playing out in a more extreme way in a still-depressed post-pandemic box-office environment, where audiences are looking for familiarity, comfort, and fun rather than novelty or narrative challenges. The pandemic seems to have hastened another period of instability for studios, where parents have plenty of home-viewing options with their kids, and even something as excellent and eventually beloved as Encanto

Disney Animation’s unofficial trilogy of adventure flops are weirdly perfect representatives of these periods of uncertainty. All three attempt to point a new way forward, stylistically and/or thematically, for their medium of all-ages animation. And all three wind up feeling muddled.

Hovers between the cleverness of its environmental allegory and the clunkiness of its familial drama. (The characters say “legacy” so often, you can picture it underlined on the filmmakers’ whiteboard. It’s the same overly emphatic writing-to-theme that Raya and the Last Dragon did with the idea of conflict and greed breaking an entire world.)

The History Of Disney's Treasure Planet

In other words, all three of these movies were caught between retro elements and futuristic designs, rather than truly melding the two. The best recent Disney animated stories have balanced familiar tropes and formulas with innovation, whether that meant executing familiar material with unusual depth of feeling (

Has a different lineage, noble in its way and befitting its sci-fi storytelling: It’s a hybridized experiment that’s just a little too ungainly to inspire uncomplicated love. Maybe in another 20 years, Disney Animation will figure out how to soar with this kind of adventure story, without such a bumpy landing.Your favorite childhood movie might’ve been a total box-office dud. The animated movies that defined the late ’90s and early 2000s are beloved by a generation that grew up watching them on VHS, but many of these nostalgic favorites were critical failures, box-office disappointments, or both. What went wrong along the way? And why did they gain such love after the fact? The

Why

Series is out to dust off those old VHS tapes (or, more accurately, find the movies on streaming) and examine some of these films.

The 10 Best Movie And Tv Adaptations Of Treasure Island

In the early 2000s, Disney struggled to find its footing. The studio wanted to shed the formula that had brought it glory in the ’90s: the sweeping Disney Renaissance musical that was no longer getting the expected big response at the box office. As early as 1999’s

, Disney was trying something different, though figuring out just what sort of different would appeal to audiences proved to be a challenge — not just for Disney, but across the industry.

As far back as 1985, but they weren’t able to get it greenlit until this period of Disney experimentation. While they had to fight for their vision, they’d earned some clout as the filmmakers behind

The Bad Guys' Steal No. 1 Spot At U.s. Box Office

, unfortunately, failed to make a splash at the box office. But nearly 20 years later, it captures a level of visual wonder and early 2000s culture that endears it to the fans who grew up with it.

Is basically an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic pirate tale … but in space! Jim Hawkins (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a little older and a little more rebellious than his book counterpart when he discovers a treasure map in a mechanical orb, leading to the mysterious Treasure Planet, where notorious pirate Nathaniel Flint stashed his loot of a thousand worlds. Working as a cabin boy aboard a ship, Jim bonds with gruff cook Long John Silver, who has his own treasure-hunting scheme.

Disney's

Was a passion project from the start. Clements came up with the idea, pulling Musker on board after their work together on 1986’s

Years Ago, One Sci Fi Cult Classic Changed The Course Of Disney History

, but studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg called Clements up the next day and told him to expand that pitch a little more. Lo and behold, The Little Mermaid was born, and it ushered in a solid 10 years of Disney box-office gold.

, they tried a third time, and again, Katzenberg refused. Upset, they decided to go directly to Roy E. Disney, then chairman of the Walt Disney Company, who had previously ousted Ron Miller as CEO, and would later organize the ousting of Michael Eisner.

, another box-office flop, was his passion project) and a strong dislike of Jeffrey Katzenberg. He backed Musker and Clements, appealing to Eisner.

Anatomy Of An Animated Adventure: Atlantis And Treasure Planet

And when it came time to renew their contract in 1995, Musker and Clements — who were being headhunted by the growing animation studios at DreamWorks and Warner Bros. — agreed to stay with Disney Animation on the promise that it would finally take up the film they’d been pushing for a decade. (One thing that helped their negotiation: Katzenberg, who’d never been a big fan of the concept, had left to start DreamWorks.)

Bombed at the box office, grossing just over $109 million worldwide against its reported $140 million budget. The Los Angeles Times listed it as one of the most expensive box-office flops of all time. When Disney realized just how badly the movie was doing, the studio adjusted its annual earnings projection and scrapped the movie’s planned sequel.