There are many reasons why Haunted Mansion tanked spectacularly at the box office, but one of the most obvious is that releasing a movie that was quite clearly better suited to the spookiest time of the year in the middle of July was an idiotic decision to say the least.
The marketplace was already swamped with vastly expensive blockbusters that were failing to live up to expectations, so the $157 million reboot of a title released 20 years previously that was itself adapted from a theme park attraction wasn’t exactly high on the must-see list of many people during the sweltering height of summer.
There was also the fact it wasn’t very good and the whole thing failed to come close to justifying its need to exist in the first place never mind at such an exorbitant cost, but the irony is about to get ladled on thick now that Disney Plus has confirmed when the already-infamous bust will be available to stream.
Not to call viewing habits predictable, but it’s a well-known fact of life that anything even vaguely supernatural tends to experience a massive surge in popularity in the buildup to Halloween, so after being completely ignored during its embarrassing run in theaters, you can bet your house on Haunted Mansion becoming the single biggest hit on Disney Plus when it lands on Oct. 4.
Of course, that’s when it should have been released in theaters in the first place given that the Halloween box office often tends to be especially lucrative for horror and horror-adjacent titles, but the damage has already been done with the Mouse House facing a hefty loss.
