Disney's Failed Next Big Thing: A Wrinkle in Time

Since the early 2000s Disney has been trying everything in their power to recapture the magic of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. With numerous failed attempts at a new franchise they accidentally created a new sub-genre of films in the process, a sub-genre I like to call the “Failed Next Big Thing”.

These are movies that Disney dumped tons of money into making, but more often than not they failed both at the box office and with critics. 2018’s A Wrinkle in Time is yet another example of this type of film. So in this video I want to examine this movie to see what went wrong, and offer some of my theories on why this film failed to launch the franchise it was supposed to.

Failed Next Big Thing Playlist:

Music Attribution:

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Check out my Letterboxd:

Sources:

[Boricua_User]

Saw this movie on a flight, and people were still walking out.

[puremilkgenius]

A Wrinkle in Time (the book) didn't sell well because audiences liked it. It sold well because teachers liked it. Teachers can purchase a whole class worth of books.

[singletonr]

My son read the book for school in fifth grade and really enjoyed it. We watched the movie on Disney+ about a year later. He was livid.

[MJTRadio]

In Disney’s defense, Wrinkle in Time is an unbelievably hard book to adapt at all, and trying to do so as a big budget, general audiences production is going to compound those problems.
Decidedly NOT to Disney’s defense… they really should have known that.

[MICHA-tctm]

Polish branch of Disney knew this movie gonna flop so they remove it from the schedule and it didin't relase theatrically here.

[nathangibbons]

I hated the fact that they took away the Orwellian neighborhood from the third act of the novel, that part really stuck with me & they dedicated barely a minute of it in the film

[capitaokanalha]

Some movie suggestions for the “franchise that never was” list:

Ender’s Game
The Darkest Mind
The Giver
City of Ember
Mortal Engines
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
The Last Airbender
The Spiderwick Chronicles

[hurdygurdyguy]

The problem I have with casting Big Stars is all I see is the Big Star and not the character. Oprah, Witherspoon et al were just cosplayers... other movies I've seen that were great was because I had no idea who the cast was, I saw the character

[AmishParadise]

One notable thing about the movie for me, even though I do not remember this movie much, was a scene near the beginning of the movie where Reese Witherspoon's character appeared in someone's house randomly and my friend randomly riffed "Hello police? There is a Reese Witherspoon in my house right now... not that I am complaining".

[alexiscastromendez]

The scene in the movie where the kid touches Oprah's face, i couldnt help but think it was such a perfect representation of how huge her ego is
Like if she was saying "yes mere creature, you may touch me, im this great" 😅😅

[queendsheena]

Hollywood has a huge problem giving their unproven tentpoles an uncompetitive release date. A Wrinkle in Time was released in March 2018. The same month that Tomb Raider, Pacific Rim Uprising, and Ready Player One came to theatres. They should've dropped A Wrinkle in Time in January to at least pray to break even. But no, Disney decided to pretend it could compete against franchises like Tomb Raider and Pacific Rim. The movie was already destined to fail and Disney turned it into a massacre with terrible marketing and release date decisions.

[MrMaxHauser]

Fun fact: the book was rejected by 27 publishers

[onbearfeet]

I laughed out loud when you said Calvin really didn't do anything except further Meg's character arc. I haven’t seen this movie, but that sentence reminded me profoundly of the token female character in almost every kids' movie I watched growing up. It's amusing to see it gender-flipped, I suppose. Not a great trope no matter which gender is carrying it, but at least it gave you one unintentionally funny sentence.

[BardicDesperation]

This book was introduced to us when we were in 3rd grade and I absolutely loved it (thank you, Ms. Carlson!) This movie was so bad, I had to hunt down a copy of the book and read it again to make sure I wasn't remembering it wrong.

[roberttreacy]

3:24
I think Mortal Engines deserves its own video.

[chrisfarley]

I think it failed because the story was not faithful to the book. Fans were not happy. I was so disappointed when the credits rolled and the message of the movie was so different from the book.

[williamphipps]

Dude, boring is a criminal understatement. This movie is EXCRUCIATING. It feels like you’re watching an already too slowly paced move in 0.5 times speed, it’s awful.

[taqiyyaconcarne]

It's not publicly known, but the star-studded cast likely ate up a lot of the budget.

[singstreetcar]

Damn, this movie was released the same period as black panther? I swear I thought this film came out in 2010 or 2011

[kingdomorange]

I think this was one of the two films I’ve ever seen in my lifetime where I got so bored that I walked out of the theater