A supposedly typical day for this Australia-obsessed second-youngest of four siblings sees him setting a fire in science lab and getting assigned Djibouti in his social studies class' country project. Alexander Cooper (Ed Oxenbould) is about to turn 12. Like them, it centers on a middle school pipsqueak whose life seems to be a series of embarrassing incidents. While it may seem insignificant compared to 2014's other Disney movies like Maleficent, Big Hero 6, and the Marvel blockbusters, Alexander almost definitely will turn a profit, having grossed $67 million domestically and $100 M worldwide.Īlexander compares less to the Cloudy cartoons than to Fox's Diary of a Wimpy Kid films. Fellow family-friendly fall lightweights The Boxtrolls and Dolphin Tale 2 were practically done selling tickets three and five weeks into their respective short runs. Direct competition was minimal few would struggle to decide between seeing Alexander, Dracula Untold, The Judge or holdovers Gone Girl and Annabelle. It opened on the second Friday of October, about as far as you can get from all of Hollywood's busy seasons. With a production budget of just $28 million, it could have been released any time of the year but made most sense when moviegoing is light and so is the competition. Alexander was never going to spawn a video game, toys, or clothing.

Disney does not seem to have had a franchise in mind, but they believed in the project enough to give it a rare non-tentpole slot on their busy output calendar.īelonging to a class that Disney CEO Bob Iger calls (borrowing a term from Steve Jobs) 'brand deposits', this undertaking prompted quite modest expectations. Sony Pictures Animation managed to turn that '70s picture book into not one but two successful family films. It runs just 32 pages, the exact same number filled by Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. And yet the film bearing it is shorter than almost all other new movies, running just 81 minutes with end credits and 75 without.Īlexander is adapted from the 1972 children's book of the same name by Judith Viorst. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is as long a movie title as you'll find with any ease these days.

Alexander and the bad day book