Tangled Does Well, Very Well

From Tangled and Harry Potter 7 face off over crowded Thanksgiving by Scott Mendelson at HollywoodNews.com:

Like a combination of Thanksgiving holidays past, it was a combination of Harry Potter holding down the fort against all newcomers, while a Disney animated property broke out of the gate. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I still won the three-day and five-day weekend derby, but Disney’s Tangled had a smashing debut that set a record for a three-day opening weekend for a standard Disney cartoon (IE – not Pixar). The Disney fairy-tale scored $49 million over the Fri-Sun portion of the weekend and amassed a whopping $69 million since opening on Wednesday. Inflation and 3D price-bump aside (56% of ticket sales were for the 3D version), this best the $42 million opening of The Lion King way back in summer 1994 (which was one of the top-five opening weekends ever at the time). It’s also the second-largest Thanksgiving opening weekend in history, behind the $80 million five-day and $59 million three-day opening weekend of Toy Story 2 back in 1999 (that $57 million debut was the third-biggest ever at the time). The lesson here is a simple one: Disney REALLY should have opened The Princess and the Frog in wide release over Thanksgiving last year.

Considering that Disney’s most recent animated features (Meet the Robinsons, Bolt, The Princess and the Frog) had opening weekends of around $25 million, the opening sprint for Tangled is all the more impressive. I took issue earlier in the year with Disney’s marketing campaign, which tried to make the film look less like a princess empowerment adventure and more like a boy-friendly action picture involving a roguish thief who sweeps Rapunzel off of her feet, but something obviously worked. I don’t have age or gender demo stats yet, but the film scored a very rare ‘A+’ from Cinemascore. That’s genuinely refreshing as A) the film is pretty darn good and B) it is indeed a ‘chick flick’ false advertising be damned.

I still contend that part of the success was about the release date, as Disney was in a better position to treat their 50th cartoon as a prime attraction of the holiday season. They shot themselves in the foot last year, opening A Christmas Carol at the beginning of November, thus causing them to put off the wide opening of The Princess and the Frog until December 12th. Frankly, most of the press attention for The Princess and the Frog occurred on Thanksgiving weekend, when the film was playing in just four theaters. By the time the film went wide, everyone was talking about Avatar.

Tangled opened on Wednesday with $11 million, giving the film a solid 6x five-day weekend multiplier. The legs on this picture are going to be about as long as Rapunzel’s hair (sorry…), and it has a solid chance of becoming Disney’s first traditional cartoon to cross $200 million since The Lion King. And yes, the film looks gorgeous in 2D, so the eventual loss of 3D theaters to The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Yogi Bear, and Disney’s Tron: Legacy shouldn’t be too much of an issue. With numbers like this, I seriously doubt that this is the last we see of the princess/fairy tale genre from the Mouse House.

Just like I said. :) Mendelson thinks like me. Anyway, there is more in the article about other movies, too, and I am anxiously awaiting The King's Speech release here in Nashville which is my other film choice of the season.

Although I am pretty sure I'll be seeing Tangled again, too. A big deal for me who averages only 3-4 movie viewings a year.

So if Disney decides to return to fairy tales eventually (and they will even if not in the immediate future) which one do you hope to see interpreted?