Disney to Suffer $140 Million Loss on ‘Tomorrowland’

As usual at this time of year, the summer blockbuster season is packed with big budget heavyweights that usually successfully make their money back (and break records while doing so). Tomorrowland won’t be one of them.

Courtesy of Screen Rant and stemming from The Hollywood Reporter, we now have the official word on the overall status of Brad Bird’s original, live-action sci-fi adventure film: complete, utter misfire.

Yes, you heard it here. Tomorrowland is a flop.

Due to a combination of heavy competition, a soft opening weekend, and lukewarm reviews, Tomorrowland will mark Disney’s first critical and commercial misfire since The Lone Ranger and John Carter.

The aftermath will be even worse. Sources close to Disney say the studio is expected to lose anywhere from $120 to $140 million when Tomorrowland finishes its run at the box office.

As is common with these type of films, it had everything going for it: a filmmaker on a hot streak (Brad Bird) and a big name star as an anchor (George Clooney), all outfitted with a production budget of $180 million and $150 million spent on marketing. While this isn’t as big a disaster as The Lone Ranger, one can see why this development is pretty significant. Disney bet the farm with Brad Bird (how could they not?), but despite their best efforts they came up short.

Aside from being the second big budget tentpole to bomb this year (the first being Jupiter Ascending), the film’s fiery box office crash also puts the growing slate of live-action Disney remakes into a much clearer perspective. Even with Brad Bird and a huge budget strapped to it, films like Tomorrowland are never a sure deal at the box-office. In fact, granting a film like Tomorrowland such a big budget makes for an even riskier play during an age where mid-budget films are beginning to turn up huge profits (to be fair, a concept like Tomorrowland definitely justified its big budget).

While Disney will be able to shrug this one off just fine (Marvel, Lucasfilm, etc), there is a reason why we will ultimately get more live-action remakes rather than more films like Tomorrowland.

What do you think? Do you have any thoughts on this development? In your opinion, what could have saved Tomorrowland?

Edited by: Hannah Wilkes