Disney had high hopes for its $150 million Haunted Mansion (2023) remake. The film’s stars came out for a special Guest appearance at the actual Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, but that was before the SAG-AFTRA strike. The movie’s premiere saw only Disney characters, not some of the film’s stars, walk the red carpet. And then Haunted Mansion was released and ran into Summer’s run-away hit, Barbenheimer.
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With Barbie (2023) and Oppenheimer (2023) blocking out the sun, Haunted Mansion made less than $25 million, a disappointment, at best, for Disney.
In its second week of release, Barbie made $95 million after an opening weekend of $162 million. Right now, Barbie is on pace to surpass the $1 billion mark at the worldwide box office, making it only the second movie this year, followed by The Super Mario Bros Movie.
Oppenheimer also saw solid second-week returns with $46 million after an $82.4 million opening weekend. Last weekend, with the release of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie saw a total box office take of $302 million, the highest so far this year and the fourth highest ever.
For Disney, Haunted Mansion marks another disappointing weekend in what has been a terrible year for the studio. Despite making more than $3 billion worldwide, more than another other studio, Disney has seen a string of high-profile failures. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) has made just $341 million worldwide on a budget of $300 million. Pixar’s Elemental (2023) has made $145 million after a disappointing opening weekend.
A disappointing 2023 comes on the heels of a disastrous 2022 for Disney. Walt Disney Studios lost nearly $1 billion in just over 12 months with box office bombs like Lightyear (2022) and Strange World (2022).
Justin Simien’s Haunted Mansion has a star-studded cast including actors LaKeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Danny DeVito, Owen Wilson, Tiffany Haddish, and Jamie Lee Curtis, but the movie has not lived up to expectations with fans. It only has a 42 percent score with critics and an 84 percent with fans.
This comes as rumors swirl about Disney delaying the remainder of their 2023 movie releases due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. Any delay could make an already difficult year even worse for Disney Studios.
We will continue to update this story at Disney Fanatic.