It is curious that precisely the same year that he turns 100, Disney is going through one of the worst strategic moments in its history: so far he has only been able to sneak one film into the top 10 worldwide grosses of the year (‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’, which doesn’t look like it will reach there at the end of the year) and, to top it off, ‘Super Mario Bros: The Movie’ He has eaten all the headlines that his animated films would once have. It’s time to counterattack with a trailer as classic as it is wonderful: ‘Wish’.
I want a decent locker
After last year ‘Weird World’ and ‘Lightyear’ became two of the biggest failures in its historyand after verifying the success of ‘Encanto’, ‘Luca’ and ‘Red’ when they came out directly on Disney+, the company is gambling everything on two movie premieres this year: ‘Wish’ and ‘Elemental’, the return to classicism from Disney and Pixar. They say in the trailer that they have been preparing this story for a hundred yearsbut in reality what they don’t know is if it will last ten more.
‘Wish’ has everything one can expect in a Disney trailer: a compelling villain, gorgeous animation, princess, talking animal, funny supporting role, and songs. A priori it is the perfect mix for it to succeed like other films of the same type. (‘Frozen’ or ‘Moana’, for example) but it seems that the general public doesn’t know that a new original production from the company is coming in November… nor does it seem to care too much.
On the other hand, the marketing campaign has only just begun and has a powerful claim to represent the first century of the studio’s life. Unlike the films released last year, it seems that ‘Wish’ has been treated in an almost artisan way as a self-tribute. We’ll see if it survives expectations or, on the contrary, Disney should start worrying about its future.
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