Anyone who thinks Disney’s recent misfortunes at the box office is an anomaly clearly wasn’t paying attention a decade ago, when the Mouse House plunged vast amounts of money into a string of blockbuster fantasies that did almost nothing but bomb. A Wrinkle in Time was one of the biggest, but at least it managed to make history before crashing and burning.
Armed with a budget of $130 million, the literary adaptation saw Ava DuVernay become the first African-American woman to direct a feature with a nine-figure budget, but the bad news is that it barely recouped that cost during its theatrical run after topping out as a measly $133 million globally.
As a result, Disney ended up an estimated $130 million in the red, leaving the eye-popping extravaganza to rank among the likes of John Carter, The Lone Ranger, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Tomorrowland as just one of many expensive flops to be thrown out into the world and then launched onto the trash pile throughout the 2010s.
On a visual level, A Wrinkle in Time is nothing short of spectacular, but in spite of an esteemed ensemble that numbers Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Chris Pine, Michael Peña, Zach Galifinakis and many more besides, the narrative was as underwhelming as it was ambitious, ultimately helping to sink the costly ship altogether.
High-profile fantasy duds always have a way of circling back around on streaming, though, with FlixPatrol confirming A Wrinkle in Time as the newest addition to the list after it cracked the global watch-list on iTunes.