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Disney’s newest attempt at box office gold, The Haunted Mansion, is a messy failure.
As of August 1, The Haunted Mansion had only earned around $30 million domestically, tacking on another $10 million outside of the United States and Canada. Much like its predecessor, The Little Mermaid, despite the esteemed and elaborate promotional efforts of Disney, their newest retelling, based on the extremely popular Theme Park dark ride, is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Although many have pointed to Disney’s ongoing liberal focus as a means by which some fans are washing their hands of the company, and others simply aren’t going to the movies due to financial hardship, there is one theory floating around that suggests something different is what has turned early viewers off of The Haunted Mansion.
Credit: Disney
It isn’t easy to keep Twitter happy. It’s a place fraught with unbridled opinions that harbor some of the worst human behavior imaginable. Appropriately, as we live in a world that loves drama, this is the perfect place for news and reviews. The Haunted Mansion hasn’t been met with excellent fanfare on the social media app. In fact, a single search will yield plenty of results complaining about the film and explanations for how it missed the mark. One interesting suggestion found via Twitter when researching the public’s perception of The Haunted Mansion was an article by Dexerto that explains the embarrassingly large amount of ad placement within the film itself.
Credit: Disney
Despite a star-studded cast featuring Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, and Jamie Lee Curtis, the film isn’t sitting well with the Disney loyalist, but Dexerto explains that maybe it isn’t due to the failed attempt to capture the popular ride’s magic on film; instead, it’s because it feels like a two-hour long commercial. Fans who have seen the film are reportedly shocked by the amount of ad placements present within the walls of the Haunted Mansion.
Credit: Disney
WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD
Twitter user Nolan Sage recently shared a particularly long list of product promotions that can be found in the film.
here’s a list of all the product placements i can recall pic.twitter.com/SDbSMSAUrL
— nolan sage (@spherection) August 1, 2023
Whether its Rosario Dawson’s accidentally spilling Zataran’s or Lakeith Stanfield’s morbid reference to Baskin-Robbins, there is a lot of shameless plugging around the haunted abode. Of course, in true Twitter fashion, many other users jumped in to share their disbelief at the “selling out” of Disney’s newest wanna-be blockbuster film. Some even called it “insane!”
This is insane and stupid. But it's also stupid when characters go to a bar and say "I'll have a beer". https://t.co/DCvM6leF9p
— Josh (@fightinz) August 1, 2023
Personally, I find it hilarious that the film draws on real-life experiences like finding the Haunted Mansion listed on Zillow or writing on the back of an oversized CVS receipt. These are things we all do in everyday life, some of which we even joke about around social media, so it makes sense that Disney would attempt to use these familiar products to gain our trust in their characters. If Rosario Dawson shops at CVS, I can too. But some feel differently.
Many feel that the excessive use of product placement within the new film kills the vibe and sells the movie out. We tend to disagree as product placement within a film isn’t new, but we can understand that sometimes a joke can be overused. In The Haunted Mansion’s case, it seems that the ongoing product promotion definitely left some viewers bored to death.
