8 Years Ago Today, Disney Turned a Beloved Sci-Fi Masterpiece Into a $130M Box Office Bomb

It’s been a while since Disney has struggled with big-budget movies that end up failing at the box office. And the craziest part is that sometimes these projects seem to have absolutely everything going for them. Imagine a beloved sci-fi book from the ’60s, a story packed with fascinating ideas, brought to the big screen with a phenomenal cast, a huge budget, and the backing of one of the most powerful studios in the industry. On paper, it sounds like a guaranteed hit. And yet somehow, everything goes wrong when it comes to the final return. It’s hard to even find the words to describe how disappointing that kind of outcome can be. This is one of those films that people occasionally remember here and there. The problem? It’s mostly remembered because of the size of the financial loss rather than any real impact it left on the genre.

The worst part is that, at the time, the gamble actually seemed logical. Before this misfire, Disney had been holding the market pretty comfortably with franchises and adaptations of already established properties like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the new Star Wars trilogy, along with live-action hits like Beauty and the Beast and Alice in Wonderland. So turning a cult literary classic into a high-end production for general viewers to discover and fall in love with seemed like exactly the kind of strategy that could work. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out that way at all.

A Wrinkle in Time Had All the Ingredients for Disney’s Next Big Blockbuster

Based on the novel by Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time follows Meg Murry (Storm Reid), a teenager still trying to deal with the disappearance of her father, a scientist who had been researching theories about space travel and alternate dimensions. So when three mysterious figures appear claiming they know where he is, Meg sets off on a journey across the universe alongside her brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) and her friend Calvin (Levi Miller). The mission? To travel through different worlds to find her father and confront a dark force that threatens to take control of everything. And even though the premise fits nicely with the kind of adventure Disney often delivers, it’s important to remember that this is still sci-fi — a genre that isn’t always easy to adapt.

Add science, philosophy, coming-of-age metaphors, and a bit of fantasy into the mix, and suddenly you have something that requires careful structure to really work (even if at first glance it looks like just another big Disney adventure). When you take all of that into account, this isn’t the type of story that automatically translates into a straightforward blockbuster. Still, the studio decided to go all in on the film and present it as a major cinematic event. Naturally, expectations started to rise.

Read Next

11 Disney Sci-Fi Movies That Flopped at the Box Office (#4 Deserved Better)

Part of that ambition came from the creative team involved. The movie was directed by Ava DuVernay, who had already received recognition for Selma and became the first Black woman to direct a film with a budget exceeding $100 million. The cast also helped sell the project as something special: Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling. And from the marketing side, Disney fully leaned into positioning A Wrinkle in Time as a promising large-scale experience: the trailers showcased colorful visuals, strange creatures, and the kind of fantastical settings that suggested people were about to witness a new epic adventure in the vein of fantasy franchises like Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia. It was the kind of campaign that made it seem like the studio was trying to launch its next big family saga.

But the root of the problem is that the movie never really justified that positioning. Instead of feeling like the beginning of something big, A Wrinkle in Time often comes across as a project still trying to figure out what it wants to be. The film attempts to preserve the important themes about identity, self-esteem, and individuality that are present in the novel, but at the same time, it also needs to function as accessible entertainment for a broad audience. And that balance never quite comes together.

The result is a film that simplifies several of the book’s most interesting ideas (especially concepts involving science and the protagonist’s personal fears), without developing them in a consistent way throughout the story. Rather than turning those elements into dramatic conflicts that actually drive the narrative forward, the movie always falls back on direct explanations or overly explicit messages. That’s a problem because this just isn’t the kind of story that works when you strip away its natural complexity.

Unsurprisingly, that became clear in the critical reception. Many reviews acknowledged the film’s visual ambition and praised Disney for trying something slightly different within the family blockbuster space. And to be fair, that visual side was arguably the most promising aspect of the entire project. The problem was only the execution. In simple terms, the movie had visually interesting moments, but it never managed to turn that striking aesthetic into a strong story. Especially today, you can’t really expect a film to succeed as a large-scale movie event if the narrative itself isn’t operating at the same level as the spectacle.

How A Wrinkle in Time Became a Major Box Office Bomb

When A Wrinkle in Time hit theaters in 2018, it opened with about $33 million during its first weekend at the domestic box office. That number might sound decent at first, but it was well below what you would expect from a production with a budget exceeding $100 million. To make matters worse, audience reactions were fairly lukewarm, which caused the movie’s earnings to drop quickly in the following weeks. The broader market situation didn’t help either, because, at the time, Black Panther was still dominating the box office even weeks after its release. So how do you compete with a movie from the MCU at that level? Going up against a phenomenon of that size (even if it came from the same studio) would have been difficult for any film, but especially for one that was still trying to convince people it was worth their time.

By the time it left theaters, A Wrinkle in Time had earned around $133 million worldwide. Under normal circumstances, crossing the $100 million mark would already be considered a respectable result. For a blockbuster of this scale, however, it was a disaster. Once production and marketing costs are taken into account, industry estimates suggest Disney lost more than $100 million on the project. And that kind of failure is relatively rare for the studio, especially during the 2010s, when Disney had built a reputation for being almost unbeatable at the box office. Sure, the company had previously taken big losses on movies like Mars Needs Moms and John Carter, but A Wrinkle in Time ended up reinforcing that kind of outlier.

Even though Disney may have had good intentions by trying something a bit different with this adaptation, that alone doesn’t guarantee a good result. Everything about the project needs to be aligned. In the end, the film got stuck between two different ideas: trying to be both a faithful adaptation of a complex novel and a big studio spectacle aimed at the mainstream crowd — and neither approach actually works.

Eight years later, A Wrinkle in Time is a good reminder that even a company with decades of success can still misjudge a project when trying to turn a cult property into a large-scale production. You can see potential in a classic sci-fi story, but if you’re going to adapt it, it might be worth thinking carefully about whether it really fits your approach in the first place. It’s a shame that the film ended up becoming one of the most expensive box office disappointments of that period, especially under the Disney banner.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!