Usually, the battle at the box office is for the number one spot, whether it’s between new movies released on the same weekend or a film attempting to supplant the previous week’s top-grossing flick. However, this year, there’s also a competition among a few box office flops, including a popular budding star, Sydney Sweeney, and one of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, Disney’s 20th Century Studios. While the Sweeney-led biopicChristy brought plenty of intrigue, it endured a few brutal box-office losses. Unfortunately, the latest release from 20th Century Studios only narrowly surpassed it, a surprising result for anything released by Disney.
The Numbers Don’t Lie: Inside Disney’s Catastrophic Opening Weekend
Disney’s latest release, Ella McCay, hit theaters on Dec. 12, and there was no holiday magic for the film starring Emma Mackey, Julie Kavner, Jamie Lee Curtis and Woody Harrelson. In what’s broadly considered one of the worst wide openings ever, the film pulled in just $2.1 million domestically. Thus far, the only thing that has kept Ella McCay from sitting neck-and-neck with Christy is the $3 million the movie pulled in internationally, bringing its total to $5.1 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo.
As World of Reel reported, director James L. Brooks was aiming for $3-4 million from 2,500 theaters in its debut. However, the brutal opening weekend for Ella McCay has a glimmer of a bright spot: it doesn’t feature a typical Disney budget. Even so, while the movie has a production budget of roughly $35 million, it’s all but destined to be a financial loss for the company.
The multi-million-dollar question for Ella McCay now is whether it can avoid the fate Sweeney’s Christy suffered after its debut weekend, potentially easing some of the net loss.
The ‘Christy’ Comparison: Why 2025 Hit Sweeney & Disney’s New Releases Hard
The one significant advantage the Sweeney-led biopic has over Ella McCay is the aforementioned production budget. While the 20th Century Studios film checked in at around $35 million, Christy was made with a roughly $15 million budget, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Although the lower budget likely helped ease the financial loss Christy endured, Sweeney’s film had an even worse domestic opening and, equally as noteworthy, suffered a brutal second-week drop-off. According to Box Office Mojo, Christy opened with just over $1.3 million domestically. To make matters worse, its theatrical run grossed $1.95 million domestically and just $29,285 internationally.
Here’s a comparison of the current box office marks for Christy and Ella McCay, per Box Office Mojo.
- Christy domestic opening: $1,310,888
Domestic box office total: $1,952,677International box office total: $29,285
Worldwide box office total: $1,981,962
- Ella McCay domestic opening: $2,100,000
Current international box office total: $3,000,000Current worldwide total: $5,100,000
The Disney-released film will see at least some increase in those numbers following its debut, assuming it avoids the fate Christy suffered from opening weekend through its second week in theaters.
As Entertainment Weekly also highlighted, Sweeney’s November 2025 release suffered one of the worst week-one-to-week-two drops in box office history, falling an eye-opening 91.7 percent. That factor unquestionably played a significant role in Christy becoming one of the biggest box-office flops of 2025.
Regardless of how much of a week-two drop Ella McCay endures, it’s bound to be one of, if not the lowest-grossing, films from Disney domestically in history. In the movie’s defense, going toe-to-toe with Zootopia 2, which was released on Nov. 26, is a losing battle for any film, considering the beloved sequel recently topped $1.1 billion worldwide at the box office and is still rolling.
Thankfully for Disney, any financial losses incurred from Ella McCay will be more than covered by Zootopia 2, which Walt Disney Animation Studios produced.
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