Disney is expected to lose up to $140m (£90m) on the George Clooney futuristic fantasy Tomorrowland, its biggest loss in two years, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Brad Bird’s film, about an inventor (Clooney) who travels with a teenage girl to a strange utopia, cost $180m to produce but also featured a staggering $150m marketing budget. So far it has made back just $170m in three weeks at the global box office, with future returns unlikely to radically change the financial picture. The film opened to just $40m at the US box office on 26 May, and failed to find its feet in China, the world’s second-largest film market, where it scored just $13.8m on debut earlier this month, to open behind the Japanese anime Stand By Me Doraemon.
The predicted loss of between $120m and $140m, according to the Hollywood Reporter’s sources, would be Disney’s biggest since Johnny Depp vehicle The Lone Ranger faltered in 2013, leading to a $150m writedown. Prior to that, the studio reportedly lost $200m on space fantasy John Carter following a misfiring marketing campaign for Andrew Stanton’s riff on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ pulpy Martian adventures.
However, Disney is having an excellent year at the box office, with superhero epic The Avengers: Age of Ultron having scored $1.3bn worldwide and fairytale fantasy Cinderella rifling past $500m in April. The studio also has Star Wars adventure The Force Awakens, the bookies’ runaway favourite to be 2015’s highest-grossing film, set to debut in December. Moreover, Inside Out and Ant-Man will both be expected to perform well when they arrive in cinemas in June and July respectively.
Tomorrowland’s failure also marks another low point in Clooney’s career after the actor-director’s film The Monuments Men failed to win over audiences or critics last year.
