Frozen Frenzy

Frozen is most likely going to score the biggest opening weekend gross for a Disney animated film, beating out the previous record-holder held by last year's Wreck-It Ralph (which took in a solid $49 million) while also possibly being one of the rare non-Pixar films to cross the $250 million mark at the domestic box office. That's what good marketing does for you!

On Wednesday, it took in a very good $15 million, which is higher than Tangled's $11 million first day gross. Already great, then on Thursday, it took in $11 million. Also good… Yesterday, however…

$26 million…

You read that right… $26 million on Friday alone. I heard reports of the movie selling out all over the country, of all things! It's in second place behind The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which didn't outgross it by much! $26 million… That beat out the likes of Brave and Cars 2, both of which opened with $66 million domestically. It also outdid several other recent animated films, and it legitimately has a shot at grossing over $70 million this weekend. Maybe even a lot more since it's the holiday season! There is talk of it topping the Thanksgiving 5-day record held by Toy Story 2 ($80 million), and possibly making more than $90 million by Sunday… It's very doable!

See Disney, that's what happens you advertise a film the way it should be advertised. That final trailer must've done the trick, while the more pandering marketing (meaning, everything up until the third "Elsa" trailer came out) helped a little bit. Now please, market all of your future films correctly, please walk away with a valuable lesson from this film's success! (And no, not an "audiences only want 90s-style Disney fairy tales!" lesson, more like a "we need to make movies look good to the audiences!" lesson.)

Now if only The Princess and the Frog was that successful… Tangled would've opened with this much had the marketing not made it look like a Shrek-era DreamWorks film… But, that's what crappy marketing does to your films, it limits them from doing better. If Disney were smart, they'd market their future Disney animated films the way they marketed Frozen. They need to fully convince their audiences that Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Giants and Moana are events, not throwaway animation hit-of-the-week films. Films worth seeing over and over in theaters! I know they can do it, the question is… Will they? That's another story...