Well, maybe … if you had really high box-office expectations like Jim Hill Media and others did.
"Cars" is the first Pixar film to not do better on its opening weekend than its last one. "The Incredibles" grossed $70.5 million its opening weekend, and its predecessor, "Finding Nemo," grossed $70.3 million. "Cars" grossed an estimated $62.8 million, despite higher ticket prices and more screens.
The film-buff site Rotten Tomatoes had a good angle on why "Cars" saw relatively lower numbers:
One reason Cars did not surge higher may have been that the marketplace has suffered through a glut of computer animated films this year. Not long ago, the arrival of a digital toon was an event as it only happened once or twice a year. Nowadays with weaker entries like Doogal and The Wild hitting theaters, and more studios jumping into the game, the novelty has worn thin. Over the Hedge and Ice Age have been satisfying families over the past two months grossing a stellar $322M combined. Also not helping matters was the film's lengthy 116-minute running time which is considerably longer than the typical 90-minute length that most young kids are used to sitting through.
But it's still widely anticipated to gross at least $200 million in North America alone. The opening was still the second-biggest-ever for the month of June. And word-of-mouth probably will bring in viewers for weeks to come.
With more and more school children starting their summer vacations every day, mid-week grosses should be strong in the weeks ahead for Cars. Reviews have been good so many fans may end up catching the film in the weeks ahead. The Incredibles went on to reach a final domestic haul of $261.4M which was almost four times its opening weekend. Nemo had even stronger legs finding its way to $339.7M, or about five times its debut. Given its start out of the gate, Cars still looks set to zoom well past the $200M mark in North America.
It sounds like the studio bosses aren't too worried, according to a report from the Los Angeles Times:
"They are batting 7 for 7," said Chuck Viane, president of distribution for Disney. "This is a home run in anybody's ballpark — you don't measure the feet."
Viane said the movie posted an opening similar to last year's Disney smash "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," which premiered at $65.6 million and went on to gross $291.7 million in the U.S. and Canada.
Then there's this opinion from a market analyst:
"Pixar is like the parent who has a straight-A student: One day the child comes home with a B-plus," said Anthony Valencia, an analyst at money management firm TCW in Los Angeles.
Viane said the movie posted an opening similar to last year's Disney smash "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," which premiered at $65.6 million and went on to gross $291.7 million in the U.S. and Canada.
And Jim Hill Media is having a discussion about the "Cars" box-office numbers. Of course, if the film turns out to the be the runaway hit of the summer by Labor Day and grosses $500 million internationally, all this talk may be for moot. And it's still going to be a huge boon for Route 66.
I don’t care how much money Cars made. For me, this film is certainly a disappointment. All my friends think this film is just ok too. For me, its story is too cliche and too long. They should have made Brad Bird assisted the story.
Just saw Cars and was absolutely blown away. What an awesome job the Pixar team did. It was better than I expected, and to be honest I expected a lot! There is absolutely, positively, no comparison between this and soemthing like “The Incredibles”. And everyone in my party of 7 agreed. I am still scratching my heads why critics loved that one (The Incredibles) so much.
Go see Cars. And see it soon! I’ll be there again before its gone.
I need to add that I find it highly ironic that people who are not liking the film are finding parts of the story too slow and laid back. Very, very, verry funny. They just don’t get it…………. and never will.
For the rest of us we will enjoy it for exactly what it is, and exactly what it was intended to be.
What breaks my heart is the fact that the story *has* become a cliche, by which I mean not that it is an overdone movie plot — because it isn’t — but that it is based on a true story that has been repeated way, way, WAY too many times in real life. Radiator Springs is a fictional town, but its plight is the same as that of a hundred towns along 66 and every other blue highway that’s been bypassed by a speed-obsessed society that has forgotten how to care about anything but whiz-bang convenience.
I wish the idea of a town being bypassed by the interstate and dying a slow, painful death were so unusual that the very notion would be ridiculed on the grounds that it’s too farfetched to be believable. Sadly, it’s not. It’s happened over and over and over and over, to varying degrees, in towns like McCook, IL … East St. Louis, IL … Newburg, MO … Spencer, MO … Galena, KS … Afton, OK … Texola, OK … McLean, TX … Vega, TX … San Jon, NM … Grants, NM … Joseph City, AZ … Seligman, AZ … Amboy, CA … Newberry Springs, CA … I could go on, but you get the idea.
Hopefully the people who watch Cars will get it, and hopefully they’ll think about it later, when they’re faced with the choice between Motel 6 and the Blue Swallow, or between McDonald’s and the Rock Cafe.
I think most of them will.
I saw the movie Friday night with a friend who is the kind of girl who touches up her lipstick after dinner and wears sandals to match her shirt. She’s not a roadie, and she’s not the kind of girl who goes grubbing around the ruins of old motels, searching for scraps of history and daydreaming about the people who once stayed there before the interstate took all the traffic away.
By the time we left the theater Friday night, she got it.
I don’t think she was the only one.