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While there have been a couple of bright spots along the way, for the most part Disney’s 2023 at the box office will be remembered a lot more for its misses than hits, with Haunted Mansion arguably the biggest offender in terms of just how badly it floundered.
There was no real reason for a 20 year-old family-friendly fantasy horror to be rebooted, never mind with a budget of $157 million and a release date at the height of July. To the surprise of probably nobody except the Mouse House’s executive team, it tanked to an incredible level and only recouped $116 million of those costs.
For the most part, filmmakers don’t tend to read reviews of their own work, but as director Justin Simien admitted to ScreenRant, he made the fatal mistake of checking out what a couple of critics were saying.
“It’s a bummer, to be honest. It’s a bummer to feel like people don’t get something that you’re doing, and that you’ve worked so hard on, but ultimately, it’s usually been the other way around. Especially with Dear White People coming out of Sundance, where critics loved Dear White People, and audiences eventually loved it. But at first, it was incredibly divisive, and it was incredibly polarizing.
I don’t typically read my own reviews, I learned that lesson a while ago, especially when they’re good. But on this one, I read a couple of them, and it felt like, I don’t know, I wasn’t quite sure what movie they were talking about all the time. It felt like there were some other things going on in those reviews, I gotta say, than just what was happening in the movie. And that kind of thing is just out of your control, you know?”
A 37 percent Rotten Tomatoes score makes it clear that Simien made a smart move not doing a deep dive, but an 84 percent user approval rating from upwards of 2500 votes certainly makes it look as if the target audience got exactly what they wanted, and it’s weaponized that to ride a wave of momentum having landed on Disney Plus.
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– Armessa Movie News