No Tomorrow: 12 Tweets on Why ‘Tomorrowland’ Failed to Find a Larger Audience
The Disney movie Tomorrowland was recently released with high financial expectations. The movie—expected by many to be one of the summer’s big box-office winners—instead opened over Memorial Day weekend to a disappointing $32.2 million ($40.7 million over the four-day stretch).
You may be saying to yourself, “$40 million in four days doesn’t seem like too bad a take”. And it isn’t until you take a few things into account…
- The movie cost $180 million to make plus a reported $60 million to market
- Furious 7 had a similar budget and opened to $147 million in April
- The most recent family movie released prior to this, Home, opened to $52 million in late March
- Reviews for Tomorrowland have been pretty lukewarm, meaning it probably won’t have legs
- The international box office for this movie has also been unimpressive so far
All that adds up to some potential bad news for Disney. So what went wrong? Many people are pointing to the film’s marketing, which didn’t do enough to explain the story and get people excited about seeing the movie.
A Dozen Tweet Takes on Disney’s ‘Tomorrowland’ Marketing
Here are a handful of recent tweets about the marketing for Tomorrowland that provide some insight on why the movie just didn’t pull people in…
#Tomorrowland had one of the worst marketing campaigns I've seen. Why the ambiguity? #JustTellMeWhatItsAbout https://t.co/KNrDCubmFs
— Jake Palenske (@jakepalenske) May 26, 2015
Why is @Variety so committed to the story that TOMORROWLAND tanked because it was original? Its marketing was pretentious and uninformative.
— Elle Schneider (@elleschneider) May 26, 2015
Hey worry bears, #Tomorrowland didn't fail bc people reject original films, it failed bc the marketing was more vague than @JohnCarter's.
— Andrew Bergamo (@andrew_bergamo) May 26, 2015
Blaming poor marketing plans on the failure of a film is a valid start (TOMORROWLAND) but a great film can overcome that problem (Frozen).
— Dan Veesenmeyer (@dveese) May 26, 2015
The Tomorrowland opening is on Disney marketing, 100%. This movie has read as trouble for months b/c they never found the hook.
— David Poland (@DavidPoland) May 25, 2015
Tomorrowland just looks from the marketing like a very long expensive ad for Disneyland. Not enticing at all
— cassian elwes (@cassianelwes) May 25, 2015
The biggest marketing shame of Tomorrowland is selling George Clooney's Frank as the lead character.
— Chelberry Bog (@ImagnryCupcakes) May 25, 2015
No, Tomorrowland shows that if you have poor marketing AND are critically panned, you make no $$& https://t.co/FDMbmOtaAR
— Daniel Doherty (@CASHEWJUlCE) May 25, 2015
Really enjoyed #Tomorrowland. I think they're marketing it wrong perhaps. But it was quite the enjoyable romp.
— Lauren (@mightylauren) May 25, 2015
My son turned down a chance to leave school early to go see "Tomorrowland". Hey @Disney, you have to tell your marketing team to try harder!
— Jay Black (@jayblackcomedy) May 26, 2015
The marketing for Tomorrowland has been, at best, confusing.
— Daniel Zuccarelli (@perpetualgeek) May 20, 2015
these #tomorrowland ads they're running really don't capture the tone of the film at all. why does #disney always have such bad marketing?
— ryanasaurus_rex (@ryanasaurus_rex) May 20, 2015
