New To The Quorum: SNOW WHITE

Disney has been making live-action versions of their animated classics for over a decade. Most notably, the studio struck gold with CINDERELLA (2015), BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (2017), ALADDIN (2019), THE LION KING (2019), and THE LITTLE MERMAID from earlier this year. Next up is SNOW WHITE, arriving in theaters on March 22nd.

SNOW was added to The Quorum this week. How do the numbers look?

SNOW belongs to the Animation/Family group, which also includes films like THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE, ELEMENTAL, and LYLE LYLE CROCODILE. The average opening weekend for films in this group is $43.1M.

At the moment, SNOW is tracking better than the average for the group at the same distance from release: 35% versus 27%.

That, perhaps, is not surprising. We would expect SNOW, a well-known property, to be above the average, especially since the group includes several titles that are originals or not based on widely known IP. It would be shocking, for example, if SNOW were tracking on par with or below films like STRANGE WORLD or RUBY GILLMAN: TEENAGE KRAKEN.

So it’s fair to say that SNOW is on a path to open above the $43M average for the group. But how does it stack up against MERMAID, which opened to $96M in May? Let’s take a look.

When we compare the two films side-by-side, we can see that SNOW is starting from a much lower position. Awareness for SNOW is 21 points behind MERMAID at the same distance from release.

It’s a similar story on the interest side where SNOW trails MERMAID by 10 points.

So, SNOW is tracking better than the $43M for the average but lower than the $95M opening for MERMAID. That’s a wide range. But given that SNOW is well behind MERMAID, at this point, we can say SNOW is closer to the $43M figure.

At least, that’s as of today. SNOW has plenty of time to reach or surpass MERMAID. Remember that just several weeks before opening, BARBIE was tracking to open $100M lower than its actual opening.