Jim Hill once again chats with Chuck Viane, head of Distribution at Walt Disney Studios. Who puts a very positive spin on the box office performance of Pixar's latest release I admit it. Maybe -- just maybe -- the folks at Walt Disney Studios actually do know what they are doing.
Case in point: "Ratatouille." When this Brad Bird film only sold $47 million worth of tickets over its opening weekend (Which was at least 20% less than the $60 million that industry experts had originally expected this Pixar production to earn over its first three days in theaters) ..
. It was all too easy for someone like myself -- who trusts in numbers -- to dismiss this new animated feature as a critic's darling that was really struggling to connect with Pixar's usual audience. Ah, but Chuck Viane -- head of Distribution at Walt Disney Studios -- warned me not to jump to conclusions when it came to "Ratatouille.
" He said that the Mouse had put an awful lot of thought into the proper positioning of its Rat movie. "We actually picked our release date about a year ago," Viane explained. "We decided that opening 'Ratatouille' a week after "Evan Almighty' and a week before 'Transformers' would give this picture its very best shot at box office success.
And -- as it turns out -- we were right." Copyright 2007 DreamWorks LLC and Paramount Pictures. Jim Hill once again chats with Chuck Viane, head of Distribution at Walt Disney Studios.
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