Disney’s Latest Zootopia Box Office Record is More Important Than You Think
Disney’s latest box office triumph is so much more important than you think. This weekend, Zootopia 2 notched its status as the “highest-grossing animated MPA film of all-time globally.”
Now, that’s a mouthful. But, essentially, it just means that Zootopia 2 is the king of the animated box office when it comes to making money. The MPA (Motion Picture Association) bestowed that honor upon Disney’s film this weekend after the animated sequel passed $1.7 billion in theaters. All of that is impressive, but it also cements a hidden fact: it’s the Zoomers’ world now.
Zootopia 2’s box office mark unseats Inside Out 2, which netted $1.69 billion during its run. That movie was also the long-awaited follow-up to a Zoomer-nostalgia favorite. See a pattern developing here. All of these Disney films that clean up on the animated side now owe a lot to being on steady rotation during the earliest years of Zoomers’ lives. Remember two years ago, when Moana was the single most-streamed movie in all of streaming. It’s a veritable ocean out there, and everyone’s favorite wayfinder breezed through it without breaking a sweat.
A lot of box office handwringing has been going on for the better part of a decade now. The acclimation back to theaters has been exacerbated by different global situations of many different stripes. Now, folks on the outside of the industry are being honest. There was simply no way that things were going to continue to go as well as they did in 2019, global health situation or not. It wasn’t really anything but a massively good year at the movies.
Zootopia 2’s success shows Zoomers hold the keys now
With that controversial point out in the open, after all, we don’t have any shareholders to convince, you can move forward with trying to make things people enjoy. And, from the looks of things, people really weren’t sick of Disney. It appears to this writer that there may have been some other factors that got hand-waved away by people not engaging in good faith. We’re not out of the woods yet, but we’re trying anyway. Zootopia 2’s big wins should have everyone questioning what they thought they knew about all of these studios.
Take last year’s other smash Disney movie, Lilo & Stitch as another piece of evidence of what we’re talking about. A movie that some rightfully questioned as “unnecessary” at the time. My favorite take on this is still the brilliant BJ Colangelo’s read from /Film. In fact, I would argue the box office absolutely counters reads of the Disney live-action remake as being unnecessary. People love Stitch, other territories love him, and the bones of these movies are so good that the new coat of paint will handily get the job done.
Disney and other big studios are trying to chart a different course now
But, unlike the younger folks out there, these are marked differences from what led to success in the previous decades of movie-making. If you can remember the late 2000s, you remember all out appeals to late Gen-x/early Millennial nostalgia. You also probably remember how successful that strategy ended up being for a bunch of different studios. As an aging Millennial though, our time is basically over as the center of the pop culture universe. Every week presents a new cast of characters on social media I have no idea about.
I’m not complaining about that either. I’m opting to age gracefully instead of lashing out because we’re not what everything revolves around anymore. This happened to the Gen-xers before us, and the Baby Boomers before them. What does Mufasa say? The Circle of Life or something? This is how the game goes. But, when you see these eye-popping numbers for something like Zootopia 2 or Lilo & Stitch, maybe pump the breaks on slagging off the live-action Tangled. You might end up surprised!
(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
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