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UPFRONTS 2013: The Overachievers 
With $66.7M in domestic ticket sales, the weekend was “good, but not Pixar great,” Cowen and Co analyst Doug Creutz says this morning. Even though the film will be profitable, “we remain concerned that the creative direction of Pixar may be wobbling as Brave is now the second consecutive film to receive less-than-rave reviews,” he adds. Brave‘s 74% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes makes it one of just three Pixar releases to fall below 90%. “While it may have been easy to write-off Cars 2 as a toy marketing campaign gone wrong, the fact that Pixar has released a creatively ‘average’ original film is of incrementally more concern,” Creutz says. He estimates that theaters here sold about 8M tickets for Brave, which is comparable to other recent Pixar films but is “well below” the levels for films released between 1999-2006. “Given the price Disney paid for Pixar, and the importance of Pixar as an engine of creative content for the company, we take the risk of erosion of Pixar’s creative greatness very seriously.”
Lazard Capital Markets’ Barton Crockett also expected more. He predicted that Brave would open domestically at $81M, which would have set a record at Pixar for a non-sequel and would have put the film on a trajectory to generate $260M here. He notes this morning that the film “missed our ambitious outlook” and reduced his domestic forecast for the film to $254M. He adds that the $20.2M box office for DreamWorks Animation’s Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted “suggests no impact from Brave.”
But Wells Fargo Securities’ Marci Ryvicker was pleased. She says the film beat her expectation of $63M. Disney shares are down 1.7% in early trading, roughly in line with the overall market.
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Remember when Pixar knew how to make decent films? Man, I miss those days.
Oh, please. Brave is a decent film, just not a great one.
How is this guy even newsworthy? Clearly he just miscalculated his own stupid predications for the weekend (83 million for a Pixar non-sequel??) and is just trying to cover his own ass / mistake by making this dumb assessment.
Regardless of what you type here saying otherwise … I am sure you have not seen Brave.
Ew. Your comment is just gross.
Brave is a decent film. Problem is, that’s not good enough for Pixar. We expect more.
I’ve yet to see ‘Brave’, but I think the minus points against it are (from the trailers) its obvious skew towards a female demographic to the extent boys are alienated entirely, and also the derivative elements e.g. one arrow splitting another (‘Robin Hood’, anybody?). Then come the inevitable higher admission prices due to it being 3D. Still far too early to write Pixar off or down, though.
Its really bad form to judge a film from the trailer. People in this business jump to conclusions all the time. Hold back from commenting on the movie until you’ve seen it.
One of the best ways to judge a film’s success is the box office uptick on Saturday. On the first weekend, Brave ticked down on Saturday.
This does not bode well for Pixar.
But seriously, Seriously, the whole point of the trailer is to get people to go see the film. It’s not us people in the business jumping to “conclusions”, how else do audiences judge if they want to commit the time and money? I’ve nothing against films that deliberately skew female, but they still have to be good. I’m not a fan of 3D though, but will still go to see ‘Brave’ to judge myself. I think, however, on the strength of the trailer and other factors, there are those who will pass.
Derivative elements in Hollywood? Surely you jest.
I’m curious as to how you think “boys are alienated entirely” . . . is it because there’s a girl hero?
I watched the trailer in the company of more children than is healthy! Basically a family and friends group outing. The girls all reacted positively, the boys all voiced a preference for eating broccoli rather than see this movie! Personally, I’m all for girl heroes, or heroines even, and have no beef against films that aim at a target audience, male, female, young, old, and deliberately skew. There is no way, short of threats and violence, the boys in the group will go to see this film. As I say, this is based purely on the trailer, the means by which many cinemagoers decide whether or not to give a film their time and money. I’ll see it for myself and decide then whether ‘Brave’ is good, bad, a one off below average or an indication something is rotten in the state of Pixar.
Just saw the film this morning. slight spoiler alert as to overall theme…
I enjoyed it but it really has a hard story to sell to a broad audience. As opposed to the Joseph Cambell-esque finding the father, this is a bit of the opposite. Reconciliation with the mother. I have to say I was getting a bit ansy in my seat… (Do I need to mention other Mommy fare to make you cringe.)… In the end, I think they pulled it off. Not too sappy or one sided. Avoided a lot of cliche’s (though indulged a few). Pretty original story. Not the best Pixar film but still very good. It might even grow in stature over time.
However, I don’t think they are going to have more than a minor hit. I seriously doubt that 13-16 year old girls (rough age of the heroin) are going to walk out of this saying “I think I can now see my Mom’s point of view”. Some might. But I think the people who are going to enjoy this film the most, are older people who’ve made peace with their parents and now enjoy their company. Mostly folks over 30. That’s a tight audience… Oh, and kids (girls) under 10 perhaps.
There may be many reasons for this but “Mom” movies for kids just don’t go over too well with the public. One theory is that most young people’s mothers are ever-present in their lives. It takes a lot of us years to realise that Mom is a person in her own right. And this could be why a cool/courageous woman might have kids, but “Mom” is never cool/a good quest partner etc… I’m not saying this is 100% or right (Or even true in reality), I’m just saying that most people under 20 and maybe even under 30 roll their eyes if they go to the movies and have to spend more time with Mom. Mom’s are great, the best, they work fricking hard… but being around all the time makes them the last person anyone wants to go on a fantasy adventure with. In a way, this story breaks some new ground because they did pull it off like I said. It’s just not going to go over in a big way.
Pixar certainly had some guts to make this considering how much the suits judge success by money. And certainly, a story like this has just as much right to be out there as all the “I am your father” stories do.
Really insightful comment. While I agree that its disappointing to have yet another princess (is that the only character available for female cartoon heroines?), I think that train has left the building and the best we can hope for is a more mature approach to the idea which Pixar did beautifully. Show girls something besides pretty clothes and men to fall in love with. I liked the movie. And who knows? In 50 years maybe we will all be complaining that princes in movies don’t get enough of a voice…
The arrow thing was derivative and we’ve seen it before ad nauseum. The bigger problem is that the movie just isn’t very good – even 74% on RT is generous because the reviewers damned it with very faint praise. The story isn’t great and it all kicks off because the heroine does something fairly horrible to someone else, which doesn’t exactly endear her. I’d guess Pixar realized they had a stinker of a story halfway through which is why they didn’t include any of it in the marketing campaign – just a lot of blurbs about changing one’s fate, which the main character then doesn’t actually really do in the end.
Exactly, all the marketing has focused on the first 15 minutes of the film – the archery contest and such, which is all just setup. It has ENTIRELY covered up the plot of the film, which is that SPOILER she turns her mother into a bear. I’m not even sure how that’s a spoiler, as this is not some kind of twist ending, it’s what the ENTIRE film is about, and it’s nowhere in the marketing. She also does this for a nasty selfish reason, and I’m not sure the character ever recovers from it.
Thank you! You nailed it on the head.
The story isn’t good. Period. Marketing mistakes whatever aside, it just isn’t good.
UP had terrible marketing. Wall-E had terrible marketing. There was nothing in the trailers that made me want to see either movie. I went because it was PIXAR. And I’m glad I did. Wall-E was wonderful and UP trades off with Finding Nemo as being my favorite PIXAR film.
Brave was just bad, mainly because the lead character was not very well thought out. I HATED her. She was spoiled, petulant, evil, and wouldn’t even take responsibility when things went wrong. She blamed everyone else but herself. And my heart just ached for her mother. They completely missed the mark because the story comes from a place of weakness. Instead of the story being about what she wants, it’s about what she doesn’t want and we never really understand why. The mom is a more relatable character because we know what she wants (even if it may be unreasonable).
This was the first PIXAR movie I’ve ever seen where I couldn’t wait for it to end.
Does anyone remember the tests they did of Woody for Toy Story? Where Woody smoked and sabotaged the other toys? Woody was very ambivalent at first. Someone, I think Katzenberg, told them to change it to the Woody we know and love today. Thank God. Because it was really bad. Well, Brave needed that note.
Such a shame. I wanted to love this movie. Especially since it was a girl lead (kinda how I really WANTED to love the Princess and the Frog), but sadly there is little to root for. Well, maybe the little brothers. They were uber cute and funny, but unfortunately disappear when the film needs them the most.
I thoroughly enjoyed Brave. It may have started a little slow but quickly picked up the pace once they got to the heart of the story. One worth seeing again
The Lorax opened to $70MM.
Illumination is actually opening movies bigger then DWA and Pixar.
Since when is a 66.7M opening weekend, which is not a holiday, “disappointing”? Haven’t seen the film yet, but if this is the benchmark, then expect to see only sequels from now on, since that’s the only way you could possibly make this much consistently. I give Pixar credit for creating original pictures and taking the chance that it might not hit the mark all the time. I’ll take that over not taking the risk at all and depending only on sequels, re-makes, re-imagining, re-booting, that we see everywhere else.
Give me a break, this is an annoying day when 66 million is considered a disappointment and since when do critics matter???? The cinemascore was A’s across the board.
“and since when do critics matter????”
They matter every day. They are also content with a single question mark when writing.
Brave was a really good movie. It is up there with Wall-E as far as being visually stunning. Did it have the same heart as Up? Not quite, but it was still touching and a great story.
Geez, it’s a B- quality film that opened huge. As a parent with a little girl we could use a lot more arrow splitting and less waiting for the Prince to save the day. Good job Pixar. They are not infallible. Nobody is. How about taming the unrealistic expectations a bit, eh? 66+ opening is pretty darn good. Cars 2 is the film that should have gotten all the scorn and concern that everyone is expressing here. Can’t even show it to my kid: way too many guns and violent bombs going off. WTF? This film is much sweeter. Not all Pixar products are going to be Toy Story. Let’s see how things play out over the long summer and later on video. I’ve got a feeling it’s all gonna work out fine. Let’s celebrate that girls have something to go see this summer where they are the hero. Oh, this and Prometheus. But Prometheus is really hard to get a four year old to sit through without crying. Still, it has to be done. Buck up little one.
The problem isn’t Brave per se: it’s the muddying of the two brands of Pixar & Disney. Brave should have been a Disney Feature Animation film rather than a Pixar film. By making it a Pixar release the expectations for the film creatively and financially were off target. It doesn’t conform with the general perception of what a Pixar film is (non gender specific, inventive storylines that don’t fit into the more standard animated feature mold). A story about a headstrong independent princess is too much like so many other Disney animated films (Mermaid, Aladin, Tangled etc), to have successfully weathered the reviews and expectations that the brand placed on the film.
The film itself is fine, entertaining and at times quite exciting, but it didn’t feel like a Pixar movie and that is the problem. It deserves to be a successful movie but when held up the the high standards box office wise and creatively that we have all come to expect from Pixar, it was doomed to fail.
The solution is to simply take some responsibility off of John Lasseter’s shoulders: let him continue to run Pixar creatively and even keep his role in steering the parks creatively, but find someone else to run Disney Feature Animation as a separate and wholly independent entity with a clear brand direction and full authority.
Let Disney make films like Brave and let Pxar go back to being Pixar. Wreck It Ralph should have been a Pixar film but instead it’s a Disney film — everything is backwards now and Bob Iger and Alan Hrn will need to fix it and fast. Start with letting Lasseter go back to what he does best, being Pixar.
I agree with what Tooner wrote
Tooner definitely has a point on this feeling more like a WDFA movie and Wreck It Ralph at least on paper and with trailers looking like a Pixar flick.
anyone who starts their comments out with “I haven’t seen Brave yet but . . .” needs to just stop talking. It’s great. Maybe not “Ratatouille” or “Wall-E” great but still up to Pixar’s standards. Everyone in the theater applauded enthusiastically when it was over. Comparing it to Cars 2 as evidence of some kind of creative decline is ridiculous. Not every film, even from Pixar, is going to hit it out of the park, but Brave still clears the fences.
Pixar is still doing good. If Brave was a Dreamworks film, it would’ve gotten 80% and up on RT. I think the real miss would be next year’s Monsters University. I don’t know why, but i’m not feeling its vibe.
This type of negative reporting is so irritating. It was successful, it got fresh reviews at rotten tomatoes, it will be profitable, BUT it wasn’t successful enough, or fresh enough, or profitable enough. Pixar can’t be expected to knock it out of the park every single time; they still create better product than most of the crap out there. And it’s a sad day when a $66.7 million dollar weekend is viewed as some kind of disappointment, especially if the budget was low enough to make that a profitable figure.
And don’t forget that JOHN CARTER was, creatively, a Pixar film.
Yeah, I was going to say that, but I thought nobody would want to read it. Success at the level Pixar experienced it for a few films may simply prove impossible to sustain for anyone. In PROMETHEUS Vickers say, apropos of almost nothing it seemed, “A king has his reign, and then he dies. It’s inevitable.” Maybe Pixar is just at the end of its reign already.
You have a whole mess of bean counters running around with their shorts twisted because one picture didn’t make as big a pile as some thought it might during its opening weekend. Oy vey! Bean counters will be bean counters- their not happy unless they are complaining about most things.
If his were any other studio, would there be all this bellowing? Pixar HAS TO produce nothing but -WOW!- all the time. C’mon folks,Not even Walt did that in his own lifetime. There’s such a thing as fair judgement, and there’s such a thing as damning something with unreasonable expectations all of the time. Brave is a beautiful film that’s going to be both popular and profitable. Rather than use up media and wind carping about it making a roll of dimes less than some jerk with a calculator thought it would, why not go after some of the other studios in town who feed the public an endless stream of flat remakes and retreads. You want to know why box office is down,you start there. Don’t waste my time or your words running down one of the only original and creatively meritorious films available these days in an otherwise awful flow of creative pablum.
So well said THANK YOU!!!
It’s not that it skews to a female demographic that is the problem (do you see how much money the female skewing Twilight movies make or the female lead Hunger Games?) the problem is lack of originality. Pixar is liked for original, creative and interesting cartoons that bring adults and children alike to the theater.
Brave is almost standard issue unimaginative Disney type movie. Oh look she is tough because she knows how to use a bow and arrow but there is no adventure that she goes on, no war she has to fight. Tangled was more interesting and funnier than Brave. Pixar did a disservice to their first female lead by making a white bread vanilla film.
Hmmm…. 81m while another at 63m.
I hope most people realize “analysts” are strictly looking out for their own. These experts are looking to do nothing more than attempt to manipulate.
I thought Brave was pretty good. The trailers really throw you off about what the film is really about. Beautiful as usual for Pixar films. I see no reason why Pixar can’t make different types of films.Not every film has to appeal to boys. parts of this did remind me of How to Train your Dragon
The suits at Disney and the expectations of Pixar’s films in my opinion will be “the erosion of Pixar’s creative greatness”. BRAVE had an unusually inspired story arc. Whatever individual critics have characterized its weakness I feel is shortsighted. BRAVE was true to itself, incorporating Disney-esque elements along with a very well designed and original storyline. The audience I was with enjoyed it thoroughly. And waited through the credits for the “tag”. Bravo BRAVE!
BRAVE is technically marvelous–wonderful animation with the most detailed rendering in any Pixar movie to date. But (like TOY STORY 3D) its depth is too shallow, with most faces “cardboarding” in the close-ups.
The first third of the script is fabulous but then the story takes a left turn that totally detaches you from feeling involved. Here I was expecting a Mulan-type tale about a young girl empowering herself and, instead, we just get a “mother-daughter conflict resolution story” that’s too Disneyesque to be dramatically satisfying.
PIRATES: BAND OF MISFITS also mislead the public into thinking it was a different film than it was. It really wasn’t even much of a pirate comedy. In the UK, the movie’s was titled the same as the book it was based on: PIRATES, IN AN ADVENTURE WITH SCIENTISTS — and THAT tells you what it really was. Most of its story was land-locked in Victorian London.
What floors me is that the major animation studios today spend between $100 to 200 million producing each title (not to mention at least another $100 million for global P&A). The effort is Herculean, with a thousand of people slaving over work stations for a year. So, with the knowledge that they’re going to to put that much effort & money into something, you would think that someone in development would focus better on the overall story.
Because there is a push right now (based on perceived product demand) for each major animation studio to come out with two pictures a year, I fear that some projects are being rushed forward before they’re truly ready.
>So, with the knowledge that they’re going to to put that much effort & money into something, you would think that someone in development would focus better on the overall story
It’s interesting to go back and read comic strips, the early Flash Gordon stuff, Buck Rogers stuff. Very often, the artwork is crude, what we’d call today even badly drawn. But the stories moved along, the characters were in some way interesting, good fought evil, and the stories can still be fun to experience. BRAVE is one of the most beautiful-looking films I’ve ever seen. But the trailers never showed me any story that was intriguing or interesting beyond cliches.
Blame globalization. Even at 150-200 million dollars, a film can still probably turn out a profit, unless it is truly awful. And with anamated films, and parents desperate for something to do with their children, anything to amuse them, they will take their kids to see it. Heck, even language and dubbing isn’t a problem, cause you just have different, and cheap, foreign voice talent for international pictures.
They can’t fail. Really fail, like John Carter.
I mean, this site has lit up paramount for the flop that is Battleship. It might even make money once the international results are in.
And we look at the final profit of something that cost 250 million to make and market, and say that it only made a profit of 10 million or something.
Only 10 million. 5-6 million after taxes. That isn’t a failure.
Thanks to overseas markets, even crappy films make money. Sure, well done films like Avengers make a ton of money. But they are hard to make.
It’s a lovely film. I think alot of the criticism is unfair. It is certainly worthy of the other Pixar films. I wonder if people are just ready to see Pixar fail.
Only in this woebegone industry could a $66.7 million opening weekend for a non-sequel, non-remake, four-quadrant movie be considered a disappointment.
As if a bunch of financial analysts know the first thing about the creative worth of a film. As if a film’s positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes is the ultimate arbiter on how good a film is.
It’s worth it to go back and look at a lot of the reviews when movies like “Vertigo”, “Bonnie and Clyde”, “Chinatown”, and “The Godfather” — films now considered classics and among the best to ever come out of Hollywood — first came out. More than a few of them were lukewarm at best. To give one example, “Bonnie and Clyde” was trashed and dismissed by a lot of leading critics when it first came out. Another example is how a lot of critics, when they reviewed “Vertigo”, accused Hitchcock of slumming and failing to live up to his earlier promise. (It’s also funny to see how a lot of those critics later “re-assessed” their initial reviews.)
I’m not saying “Brave” is a classic or anything. I just shake my head at financial analysts affecting the stock of a film company by talking like they’re qualified to comment on that company’s creative direction, especially when they cite Rotten Tomatoes to back up their “expertise”.
Bonny & Clyde got bad reviews because it’s lame. That’s why.
It’s gotten long term praise simply because of its groundbreaking display of violence at the time. But the movie itself is not very good. Have you watched it lately? Kind of boring, Faye Dunaway chews the scenery, and definitely full of stupid subtext about impedance causing violence. Yawn.
Wait why is that number bad? It made more money opening weekend than Ratatouille, Wall-E, Cars 1 & 2, Monsters Inc! It did especially well for a film that didn’t show the whole plot in it’s trailer. It’s a good animated flick, maybe more signature Disney than Pixar but still good none the less.
So a couple of analysts are off on their box office forecast, and it’s because Pixar is in decline creatively or something? Maybe they were just, I don’t know, wrong about their numbers, period.
In this respect Pixar is a victim of its own success. They’ve set the bar so incredibly high, any film that isn’t deemed Oscar worthy by major reviewers is going to be a creative disappointment. The standard is ridiculous. The potential audience for Brave always seemed narrower, given the female lead and setting, than for other Pixar flicks, and I think that will prove to be true. Doesn’t mean Pixar is all of a sudden on the rocks creatively, just that it was no Up or Toy Story that appealed to young and old, boys and girls alike.
You realize just how great Pixar’s reputation is when people are up in arms over a good movie that was number one at the box office but didn’t set records.
Exactly. Nobody is saying this film was awful. It was a fun, beautifully made children’s adventure. It’s just that Pixar had set the bar impossibly high with masterpiece after masterpiece, and BRAVE is definitely not at the level of those earlier films.