Archive notice: This article was originally published on June 16, 2015. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
When an entire film is based on a theme-park ride area, it can work – see “Pirates of the Caribbean”. It just did not work again with “Tomorrowland”. The Hollywood Reporter reported that Disney could be expected to suffer losses of up to 140 million dollars. So far, the film has grossed only about 170 million US dollars worldwide on a production budget of 190 million. And that does not even include all the costs of the elaborate advertising measures.
But from a business perspective, Disney, with its associated studios Pixar Animation Studios, the rights to Marvel Comics and, since 2012, George Lucas’s Lucasfilm company, is on such solid ground that it can absorb such a finacial debacle. At the same time, the company also achieved major financial successes with “Cinderella” and “Age of Ultron”.
The Same Guarantee of Success as in 1993
“Jurassic World”, by contrast, is once again standing where “Jurassic Park”, the most successful film of its time in the early 1990s, once stood. The fourth instalment of the dinosaur saga took in half a billion US dollars in its very first weekend – making it clear that dinosaurs simply never go out of fashion. In addition to this windfall for Universal Pictures, the next wave awaits at the beginning of July, when the “Minions” open in cinemas. And if the yellow fellows were to flop, that would be an extremely big surprise. Incidentally, they are also on the cover of our next DP issue, which will be published on July 10.
