In a bigger-picture sense, the James Bobin-directed film may herald the slow pop of the reheated-fantasy bubble. So where did this well-oiled locomotive jump the tracks? The House of Mouse scored big with the ready-made Oz the Great and Powerful ($493.3 million), Cinderella ($543.5 million), and Maleficent ($758.5 million), clearing an easily-traveled path to riches for Mia Wasikowska’s second adventure as the latter-day Alice.

Burton’s mall-Goth adaptation coined a winning formula that Disney and other studios have followed right to the bank time after time. Or at least, it better - when executives stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, someone usually demands a few answers as to how the hell this could have happened.īecause by anyone’s calculations, Alice Through the Looking Glass should’ve worked.

Floppier than the average flop, Disney’s new folly provided industry competitors and common filmgoers several valuable lessons about how movies are made and sold. A paltry sum in comparison to the $116 million opening weekend that Tim Burton’s 2010 original “dark” fairy tale garnered, this sequel’s poor showing registered as a sizable blip in Disney’s ledgers. Like a heroine tumbling through the rabbit hole, Disney took its own great fall this past weekend, as prospective tentpole Alice Through the Looking Glasscoughed up a meager $34 million at the box-office in its opening days of release.

Alice through the looking glass film