In a pandemic-era world where movies can come and go at the box office in the blink of an eye, hitting home video mere weeks after they are initially released, what this movie has managed to do is nothing shy of remarkable. It’s also worth noting that “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” did actually hit VOD weeks after it debuted in theaters, and was made available on Blu-ray on February 28. Heck, it’s even available to stream on Peacock now, which might explain why it finally vacated the top 10 at the box office. All the while, Universal has been watching the ticket sales continue to climb.
The biggest reason this happened is, if we look over the release calendar for the first three months of 2023, it becomes incredibly obvious that nobody decided to get in Universal’s way here. There hasn’t been a single family-friendly animated movie released in theaters since “The Last Wish” debuted. How did studios like Disney and Warner Bros. let that happen? That’s a question for someone well above my paygrade, but Universal benefited greatly, as we can see. This used to be Disney’s specialty, particularly when it came to Pixar. Yet, with so many of Pixar’s releases going direct to Disney+ over the past few years, Disney may have accidentally lost some of that ground in the process.
