the industry

Why Toy Story 3 Soared and Jonah Hex Was Cursed

The Weekend’s Winner: Disney/Pixar and their third outing of Toy Story: Estimated gross, $110 million.

The Weekend’s Loser: Warner Bros. and its disfigured Jonah Hex: Estimated gross, $5 million.



How Toy Story 3 Scored:
Even though the kiddies all clap their palms raw whenever that silly cyclops of a desk lamp hops out to squash the “I” in “Pixar,” Disney still faced a conundrum: Those tykes who were in first grade when Toy Story first hit theaters in 1995 are now seniors in college.

Helped by a 98 percent favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes, not only did those former grade schoolers come running back to make this Pixar’s top-grossing opener ever (helped by 3D pricing), but so did everyone else: Its audience was 46 percent over the age of 25, and roughly equally distributed between males and females. Who went? With 4,000 plus theaters showing it, “Everybody,” said Chuck Viane, Disney’s distribution chief. But what about “franchise fatigue” and all that? Says Disney’s Sameth, “People don’t go to see franchises; they go to see movies. This is a great one.”

Helped by a 98 percent favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes, not only did those former grade schoolers come running back to make this Pixar’s top-grossing opener ever (helped by 3D pricing), but so did everyone else: Its audience was 46 percent over the age of 25, and roughly equally distributed between males and females. Who went? With 4,000 plus theaters showing it, “Everybody,” said Chuck Viane, Disney’s distribution chief. But what about “franchise fatigue” and all that? Says Disney’s Sameth, “People don’t go to see franchises; they go to see movies. This is a great one.”

Why Hex was Cursed: Where to begin with the Josh Brolin bomb? A film with a horribly disfigured leading man, directed by a live-action neophyte, troubled by reshoots, and marketed like the studio couldn’t quite commit to admitting it existed. Result? A supernatural Western comic book movie that was rejected by occultists, fans of Westerns, action movies, comic books and Josh Brolin alike. Warner Bros. might have invented the first no-quadrant movie.

Why Toy Story 3 Soared and Jonah Hex Was Cursed