5 Reasons Disney's Haunted Mansion Flopped At The Box Office

Disney has had an admittedly mixed year at the box office. They've had hits like "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," not to mention the absolute surprise turnaround that has been going on with "Elemental." But the studio has also suffered some horrible misfires like "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" and "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania." Sad to say, the new attempt to turn a theme park attraction into a movie, "Haunted Mansion," has joined that club following its very disappointing opening weekend.

Against a blockbuster budget, director Justin Simien's star-studded affair opened just $24 million domestically, placing third on the charts. With both "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" and "Meg 2: The Trench" opening this week, Disney's latest has very little chance at a reversal of fortune in the weeks ahead. So, what went wrong with this attempt to turn the beloved theme park attraction into a cinematic experience? Let's break it down.

First and foremost, Disney could not have asked for worse competition. The Barbenheimer phenomenon was still in full swing in its second weekend, with both "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" only dropping 43%, respectively, taking the number one and number two spots on the charts again. "Barbie" genuinely has a shot at becoming the highest-grossing movie of the year. Meanwhile, "Sound of Freedom" continued its unexpectedly huge run, and even "Talk to Me" surprised with a bigger-than-expected debut (more on that in a moment). So yeah, straight-up big summer competition took a big bite out of what this movie might have done on an otherwise less crowded weekend.

Speaking of releasing "Haunted Mansion" on a possibly less crowded weekend, I am certainly not the first person to point out that this movie feels like it should have been released closer to Halloween, perhaps in late September or early October. Having a family-friendly, spooky movie in theaters might have been a great bit of counterprogramming against more hardcore horror movies that will be in theaters this fall, such as "Saw X," "The Nun 2," or "The Exorcist: Believer." No, it shouldn't be that horror movies only arrive in October — heck, "Insidious: The Red Door" did superb business this summer — but in this case, late July felt like the wrong place for a big, expensive movie like this.

One of the biggest things this iteration of "Haunted Mansion" had going for it was a stacked ensemble cast. We had recent Oscar-winner Jamie Lee Curtis, Rosario Dawson who currently plays Ahsoka Tano in "Star Wars," internet favorite Danny DeVito, and the never-not-great LaKeith Stanfield, among others, sharing the screen. Yet, because studios like Disney have refused to come to the negotiating table to try and reach a fair compensation deal with actors and writers, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) is on strike, meaning that none of these big stars were able to promote the film. That absolutely hurt the bottom line, as people who don't live their lives online rely on the press cycle to become aware of a movie like this.

Am I saying that a robust press tour would have turned the tide enough to actually make this a success? No, I am not. But it sure as heck would have made a difference. Pay your actors, Hollywood. This is just the first big movie coming out that is going to have to contend with a lack of press cycle and the longer this drags out, the more the bottom line will suffer. It's a shame it's happening this way, but this is a true demonstration of the value stars bring to a movie like this even outside of their actual acting on-screen.

Again, it's not that critical praise always results in a lot of meat in seats, but it sure as heck never hurts. On the flip side, if a movie fails to garner much must-see buzz? It can absolutely hurt matters. Particularly on a weekend when a movie is competing with extremely buzzy crowd-pleasers like "Barbie," "Oppenheimer," "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning," and even "Elemental." Unfortunately, "Haunted Mansion" sits at a lousy 41% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which suggests a heavily mixed response. You can read /Film's 7 out of 10 review right here. But that's not enough to build good pre-release buzz, and it certainly hasn't led to must-see chatter from moviegoers after the fact.

More than anything else, and much like "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" before it, the biggest thing that damned "Haunted Mansion" was its overly inflated budget. I have talked exhaustively about this over the past couple of years but Hollywood has a budget problem and it has reared its ugly head this summer in a big, bad way. The fact that this family-friendly horror movie wound up costing $150 million before marketing is a travesty. At the box office, it is all relative. That's why we're praising "Talk to Me" for making $10 million against a $4.5 million budget on its opening weekend. That math checks out. The math for Disney does not. This budget thing is becoming a full-blown crisis as I see it and Disney, as well as everyone else in Hollywood, needs to sort it out and fast.

"Haunted Mansion" is in theaters now.