‘Haunted Mansion’ is Now Available on Disney+
We’re fully into spooky season now that October has begun, and I could not be more thrilled! It’s the most wonderful time of the year, after all.
The days ahead are sure to be filled with pumpkin-spice everything, fall foliage, Jack-o’-lanterns, and some awesome Halloween movie marathons. And now, there’s another movie to add to your watchlist!
Haunted Mansion on Disney+
Haunted Mansion is now available on Disney+! This is the perfect spooky edition for the Halloween season.
There’s always room for one more.#HauntedMansion is now streaming on #DisneyPlus. #Hallowstream pic.twitter.com/qsEUyRihQX
— Disney+ (@DisneyPlus) October 4, 2023
The movie premiered in theaters back in July, and hasn’t performed very well in terms of bringing in the money. It’s only grossed $114.4 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo.
This means it’s made less than Disney’s 2003 attempt at a Haunted Mansion movie, which brought in $182.3 million worldwide. Streaming obviously wasn’t an option back in 2003 like it is now, but still — the first movie was considered a flop.
The budget for 2023’s Haunted Mansion is reportedly somewhere around $150 million (according to Collider), so it hasn’t even broken even.
It’s a bit surprising that this year’s Haunted Mansion movie did so poorly when you look at how much star power was involved. The movie starred Owen Wilson, Rosario Dawson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tiffany Hadish, LaKeith Stanfield, Danny DeVito, and Jared Leto, among others.
Those are some very big names, but they still didn’t manage to bring in the audiences. There are probably a few reasons for this.
Haunted Mansion premiered in July, which many people were confused about. It’s got all of the ingredients to be a perfect spooky Halloween movie, so why didn’t it come out in October, or at least September?
Well, Disney probably premiered the movie in July because that’s why kids are out of school. However, families looking for a fun Halloween activity probably would’ve still come out on the weekends to see the movie in the fall!
The movie also came out only a week after both Barbie and Oppenheimer, which performed incredibly well at the box office. Going to the movies is expensive, so if people were already paying to see one or both of these movies, they were way less likely to also pay for Haunted Mansion.
Barbenheimer also became a cultural phenomenon, making both movies feel like an event. Haunted Mansion just did not have that level of hype.
Also, Disney has been very predictable with their movies when it comes to streaming patterns. They release them into theaters and then put them on Disney+ a few months later.
So, why spend the money to go see Haunted Mansion in theaters when we knew it would be on Disney+ before Halloween, especially since a lot of people already pay for Disney+? I myself actually paid to see Barbie twice in theaters (because it was just THAT good) and was perfectly happy to wait for Haunted Mansion to release onto Disney+, because I knew it was coming soon.
So, we shall wait and see how well Haunted Mansion does on streaming. Disney usually gives a numbers update when things perform particularly well on their streaming platform, but these numbers are also self-reported, so there’s no telling how much truth there is to them.
Also, this doesn’t appear to be a bad movie — the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 84%. This is WAY higher than the 31% the 2003 movie received.
At the very least, you have something new to watch for Halloween alongside your classics! Stay tuned for more Disney entertainment news and updates.