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Success and Challenges at the Box Office for Disney and Pixar

Finding Nemo 3D Poster

The latest box office report looks both good and bad for Disney. Finding Nemo 3D managed to come in second place in a weak weekend box office with $17.5 million domestic and $5.1 million foreign. The silver lining is that Disney estimates these 3D conversions to only cost about $5 million each. So it’s a very affordable process that will quickly lead to decent profit for Disney even with if crowds are a bit light. Then add in those DVD sales for the 3D version and bing, bing, bing.

This leaves Finding Nemo on a path to match or beat Beauty & The Beast 3D, but it won’t come close to The Lion King 3D’s $94 million. Of course, Finding Nemo was just in theaters 9 years ago, it had been something more like 17 since The Lion King came out. As I said in my review, I’m not sure the 3D process really hit it out of the park with Finding Nemo, but I’m happy to have them released to the big screen ever 7-9 years. The old Walt Disney Company used to do this to great effect and it hooked a new generation of kids. Even with DVDs, there’s something to be said for the movie theater experience and 3D makes it that much more interesting (although the movies work just fine without it, obviously).

But wait, don’t call your stock broker yet, there is more good news for Disney. Brave continues to draw audiences around the world and just passed $500 million in worldwide receipts. Pretty good for Pixar’s first princess. The question remains, will Merida be officially added to Disney’s princess collection? If you want to add Brave to your collection, you can save 30% when you pre-order the DVD today.