Pixar’s Coco crossed $800 million at the global box office yesterday. It is the fifth Pixar flick to do so, alongside Toy Story 3 ($1.067 billion in 2010), Finding Dory ($1.028b in 2016), Finding Nemo ($940m in 2003 and 2012) and Inside Out ($857m in 2015). So, yeah, it’s Pixar’s third-biggest non-sequel of all time and their fifth-biggest global earner ever. But it actually did this without a ton of help from North America.
As much as we all like to talk about the value of onscreen representation and the conventional wisdom about how “not a white guy” movies don’t travel overseas, Coco is yet another occasion of domestic audiences not putting their money where their mouth is while overseas audiences pick up the slack. Okay, so Coco isn’t quite the same thing as Scarlett Johansson’s Ghost in the Shell, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil: The Final Chapter or even Vin Diesel’s multicultural xXx: Return of Xander Cage. But those three films (along with more obvious examples like Furious 7 and Black Panther) expose the lie that movies about white women, minority women and minority men don’t sell overseas.
Moreover, many of those films outright flopped in North America. And while Coco was a solid grosser in North America, its $209.72 million domestic gross was, adjusted for inflation, Pixar’s third-lowest earner behind Cars 3 ($152.9m in 2017) and The Good Dinosaur ($123m in 2015) in terms of domestic tickets sold. It’s a little disconcerting three of Pixar’s last four releases (aside from Finding Dory) were also among their lowest-grossing domestic titles. Yes, part of this is the whole “folks don’t go to the movies as much as they used to even a few years ago” thing, but it’s still not good news.
To be fair, like Moana and The Good Dinosaur, Coco was surrounded by a Marvel movie on one side and a Star Wars flick on the other, with a big YA fantasy or superhero release (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part II and Spectre in 2015, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in 2016 and Justice League in 2017), while the crowd-pleasing kid-friendly Wonder did Coco zero favors. And while I adored Wonder and plenty of families saw both the Pixar musical and the Lionsgate drama late last year, having a kid-friendly heartwarmer that starred a bunch of white folks provided… counterprogramming to families less inclined to take in a specifically Mexican folktale.
It’s not unlike how The Blind Side‘s blow-out success stopped Precious dead in its tracks in (and didn’t help The Princess and the Frog) in late 2009. I liked all three of those films, and I’m aware that I may be painting with too broad of a brush. But you’d be shocked (or not shocked at all) at the number of comments I got back when Princess and the Frog came out expressing concern that the movie was too political, too black or intended to cash in on the Barack Obama presidency. Because Disney’s animators have the ability to either make a movie in less than a year or borrow Doctor Strange’s Time Stone.
If Disney had the ability to time travel, they probably would have opened Princess and the Frog wide over Thanksgiving and not greenlit Mars Needs Moms or The Lone Ranger.
No matter the reason, the fact remains that we American entertainment writers talk a good game about onscreen representation yet it is the overseas audiences that are financially justifying it. They made Fox’s Life of Pi into a $600 million+ smash hit in 2011. They pushed Fox Searchlight’s 12 Years A Slave over $150m in 2013. They got Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s xXx: Return of Xander Cage (which stars a deluge of “not a white guy” action heroes and villains) over $340m worldwide on an $85m budget. They are the reason WB and New Line’s Rampage, which stars Dwayne Johnson and Naomie Harris, will soon cross $350m worldwide on a $120m budget. And, yeah, they (not just China and Mexico) are the reason that Pixar’s Coco just topped $800m at the global box office.
Sure, we can take credit for WB’s Wonder Woman and Disney’s Black Panther, and maybe even the last few Disney Star Wars movies, but otherwise I would argue for onscreen diversity because of the overseas box office, not in spite of it. This isn’t a zero-sum game, as WB’s Ready Player One sits on one end and Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time sits on the other. The notion of Universal/Comcast Corp.’s Pacific Rim: Uprising starring John Boyega instead of Charlie Hunnam may not be a draw for overseas moviegoers, but it sure as heck isn’t a turn-off.
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Pixar’s Coco crossed $800 million at the global box office yesterday. It is the fifth Pixar flick to do so, alongside Toy Story 3 ($1.067 billion in 2010), Finding Dory ($1.028b in 2016), Finding Nemo ($940m in 2003 and 2012) and Inside Out ($857m in 2015). So, yeah, it’s Pixar’s third-biggest non-sequel of all time and their fifth-biggest global earner ever. But it actually did this without a ton of help from North America.
As much as we all like to talk about the value of onscreen representation and the conventional wisdom about how “not a white guy” movies don’t travel overseas, Coco is yet another occasion of domestic audiences not putting their money where their mouth is while overseas audiences pick up the slack. Okay, so Coco isn’t quite the same thing as Scarlett Johansson’s Ghost in the Shell, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil: The Final Chapter or even Vin Diesel’s multicultural xXx: Return of Xander Cage. But those three films (along with more obvious examples like Furious 7 and Black Panther) expose the lie that movies about white women, minority women and minority men don’t sell overseas.
Moreover, many of those films outright flopped in North America. And while Coco was a solid grosser in North America, its $209.72 million domestic gross was, adjusted for inflation, Pixar’s third-lowest earner behind Cars 3 ($152.9m in 2017) and The Good Dinosaur ($123m in 2015) in terms of domestic tickets sold. It’s a little disconcerting three of Pixar’s last four releases (aside from Finding Dory) were also among their lowest-grossing domestic titles. Yes, part of this is the whole “folks don’t go to the movies as much as they used to even a few years ago” thing, but it’s still not good news.
To be fair, like Moana and The Good Dinosaur, Coco was surrounded by a Marvel movie on one side and a Star Wars flick on the other, with a big YA fantasy or superhero release (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part II and Spectre in 2015, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in 2016 and Justice League in 2017), while the crowd-pleasing kid-friendly Wonder did Coco zero favors. And while I adored Wonder and plenty of families saw both the Pixar musical and the Lionsgate drama late last year, having a kid-friendly heartwarmer that starred a bunch of white folks provided… counterprogramming to families less inclined to take in a specifically Mexican folktale.
It’s not unlike how The Blind Side‘s blow-out success stopped Precious dead in its tracks in (and didn’t help The Princess and the Frog) in late 2009. I liked all three of those films, and I’m aware that I may be painting with too broad of a brush. But you’d be shocked (or not shocked at all) at the number of comments I got back when Princess and the Frog came out expressing concern that the movie was too political, too black or intended to cash in on the Barack Obama presidency. Because Disney’s animators have the ability to either make a movie in less than a year or borrow Doctor Strange’s Time Stone.
If Disney had the ability to time travel, they probably would have opened Princess and the Frog wide over Thanksgiving and not greenlit Mars Needs Moms or The Lone Ranger.
No matter the reason, the fact remains that we American entertainment writers talk a good game about onscreen representation yet it is the overseas audiences that are financially justifying it. They made Fox’s Life of Pi into a $600 million+ smash hit in 2011. They pushed Fox Searchlight’s 12 Years A Slave over $150m in 2013. They got Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s xXx: Return of Xander Cage (which stars a deluge of “not a white guy” action heroes and villains) over $340m worldwide on an $85m budget. They are the reason WB and New Line’s Rampage, which stars Dwayne Johnson and Naomie Harris, will soon cross $350m worldwide on a $120m budget. And, yeah, they (not just China and Mexico) are the reason that Pixar’s Coco just topped $800m at the global box office.
Sure, we can take credit for WB’s Wonder Woman and Disney’s Black Panther, and maybe even the last few Disney Star Wars movies, but otherwise I would argue for onscreen diversity because of the overseas box office, not in spite of it. This isn’t a zero-sum game, as WB’s Ready Player One sits on one end and Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time sits on the other. The notion of Universal/Comcast Corp.’s Pacific Rim: Uprising starring John Boyega instead of Charlie Hunnam may not be a draw for overseas moviegoers, but it sure as heck isn’t a turn-off.
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