Tangled bests all new films at Box Office, fails to beat Harry Potter

It’s not just Disney’s theme parks that are struggling with competition from the wizard kid Harry Potter. Despite pulling in over $69 million in Holiday weekend box office cash, Tangled failed to overcome part one of Harry Potter’s final film. In it’s second weekend Potter earned $76.3 (for the Holiday period). Still I have to classify this as good news for Disney animation. The $49.1 million it earned just on the weekend is Disney’s biggest ever weekend for a non-Pixar animated feature. Shame it couldn’t earn a few more and earn $50 million for the 50th animated feature… that would have made a nice headline.

Interestingly the core audience for the film continued to be mothers and daughters with almost two-thirds of the audience skewing in that direction. I did see the film today and think that it’s a perfectly fine film for fathers and sons too. If Disney had chosen to market the core of what this film is about (finding one’s path as you cross from childhood to adult), I think it would have attracted a wider audience. More on that in my review (I hope to get to that tomorrow). I think it might be too early to throw in the towel when it comes to princess films.

So congrats to the fine folks in Burbank. You definitely have a winner on your hands here, and this time, the paying audience agrees. Woot!