Strange World, The Fabelmans, And Devotion All Bombed Big Time At The Box Office

It was a big weekend at the box office as several major movies entered the fold to get in on the Thanksgiving holiday. In some cases, that worked out well, with Netflix testing the theatrical waters and scoring with "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery." But, it pains me to say, for the most part, it was brutal for the weekend's newcomers. Disney had an all-timer of a flop with "Strange World," while Steven Spielberg suffered a massive disappointment commercially with "The Fabelmans," and Sony quietly dropped a bomb in the form of "Devotion." It was, all things considered, a brutal holiday for Hollywood.

Starting with "Strange World," Disney's original animated flick tanked incredibly hard, earning just $11.9 million over the weekend and, as of this writing, $27.8 million worldwide. It debuted to a downright abysmal $9.2 million overseas and, with a budget said to be anywhere between $135 and $180 million, this is going to lose a lot of money for the Mouse House. Case in point, early estimates point to Disney taking a $100 million loss over the theatrical release. This is perhaps the biggest animated bomb in Disney's history.

It's a brutal result and one that comes after nearly three years of Disney relegating animated films such as "Raya and the Last Dragon," as well as several major Pixar releases, to Disney+. Did that hurt the value of Disney animation theatrically? I'm not here to speculate recklessly but it doesn't look good. This is the biggest animated flop the studio has experienced since "Treasure Planet," which happened almost exactly 20 years ago. Poetry of the most undesirable order for a major movie studio, to be certain.

Moving on. Call it bad luck, call it bad timing, call it many things, but Sony's "Devotion," directed by J.D. Dillard, just quietly became one of the bigger live-action theatrical disappointments of the year. With a budget of $90 million, the wartime movie about airmen during the Korean War, particularly the first African American Navy pilot ever, tanked. Over the weekend, it took in $5.9 million but even over the full five-day holiday, it topped out at a mere $9 million. International audiences have yet to weigh in but there is virtually no chance that overseas ticket sales are going to bail out a very decidedly American war movie without any huge A-list movie stars.

Granted, the cast is outstanding, with Jonathan Majors leading the way, a man on the verge of becoming an A-list star for sure. We also have Glen Powell, who starred in another movie about fighter pilots earlier this year in the form of "Top Gun: Maverick." That movie went on to earn more than $1.5 billion globally and is now one of the highest-grossing movies of all time. So maybe audiences have had their fill of this sort of thing? And, all due respect, but "Devotion" is not nearly as much of a crowd-pleaser.

Needless to say, Sony is going to take a bath on this one. It's amazing to look at the larger picture, as the studio has had a rough year. "Morbius," "Father Stu," and "Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile" all underperformed. "Uncharted" and "Where the Crawdads Sing" were the only hits and, on the "Uncharted" front, it wasn't a huge blockbuster hit. And "Bullet Train" did fine but not great against its $90 million budget. In stark contrast to the end of 2021 when the studio was riding high on "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and "Ghostbusters: Afterlife."

Lastly, Universal Pictures bet on Steven Spielberg with his latest, "The Fabelmans," which expanded to more than 600 theaters over the holiday after doing well in limited release. Unfortunately, Spielberg's deeply personal, critically-acclaimed effort (read our review here!) simply didn't find much of an audience in its expansion. It earned $2.2 million over the weekend and $3.1 million across the full five-day holiday window. With its earlier rollout, it's at $3.43 million domestically, with an international rollout planned through March of next year.

The somewhat good news here is that the movie is in the mid-budget range at $40 million. Be that as it may, the numbers are not good and Universal would need miracle-like legs through awards season to justify the spending. It's a damn shame, to say the least of it, as Spielberg is one of the finest directors to ever do it. Meanwhile, his latest original has flopped and his acclaimed "West Side Story" remake also was a huge financial loss for Disney last year.

This, to me, is the biggest concern of the bunch. When even Spielberg can't draw a big audience with an acclaimed, adult-skewing drama, where does that leave us? Heck, this is the man that turned "The Terminal," a movie about Tom Hanks living at the airport, into a $218 million grosser. It's a tough pill to swallow, that much is certain. So yeah, the box office has recovered a great deal overall in 2022, but we're still a long way from where we were before the pandemic hit. And it's starting to feel like certain, much-needed types of movies may never be able to be what they used to be.