9 Movies That Bombed Twice

In the string of live action Disney remakes, the choice to adapt Mulan into a very straight-laced affair was a bold one. Gone were the catchy songs and the wise-cracking Mushu, and instead we had high budget fantasy action drama and political controversy.

Mulan’s original release was scheduled for the holiday slot of 2018 but it was significantly delayed until March 2020. Unsurprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic saw that release date repeatedly slide until Disney eventually decided that they just needed do something different.

Mulan was the first film to come to Disney+ with what the company called a “premium fee”, available to be streamed in the United States for the price of $29.99.

Only 10% of Disney+’s subscriber base opted to pay for a rental of the film, raising an estimated $60-$90m. It was a trial by fire situation, but Mulan’s budget was a whopping $200m and there wasn’t a hope in hell it would break even this way let alone cut a profit.

The countries that did see later a theatrical release for Mulan, across Asia and Europe, had some understandably half-filled screens and brought the film’s theatrical box office up by $70m. One of the biggest contributors to this final number was China but even so it’s very clear that that number could’ve been much bigger.

China did not respond well to the movie due to many contributing factors: a very sudden release, political controversies amongst its filming locations and cast, and negative reactions online from Chinese viewers who had previously pirated the film.