Fion Lee's Blog

Jasmine, Snow White, Mulan, Aurora, Cinderella, Pocahontas, Belle, Ariel, Tiana and last but not least, the newly added Rapunzel. They are all known as the Disney Princesses. I’ve personally watched all the Disney Princess movies and find all of them have a particular characteristic, their leading female roles are easily recalled; however, what about the males?

Despite the fact that “Aladdin” was named after Aladdin, for the rest of the Disney Princess movies are mainly targeted to younger teenage girls. How many “Princes” can you recall?

Disney saw a huge drop of interest in Disney Princess movies from “Princess and the Frog” (due to poor marketing of the film), they quickly changed their original title, “Rapunzel” into a gender-neutral one, “Tangled” so that they could target the movie not just to teenage girls, but also to boys. As Justin Chang of Variety pointed out, “imagine if ‘The Little Mermaid’ had been called ‘Beached'”. Did this marketing strategy affect the ticket sales as Disney hoped?

With being released for 69 days (as of now), “Tangled” has a global ticket sales of $444 million, while compared to the previous Princess movie, “Princess and the Frog“, global ticket sales almost DOUBLED. This is a significant evidence that maybe Disney Princess movies should not only target to girls but also include a spot for their teenage boys who want to watch some “princess movies”.

Moreover, there’s been rumours saying that “Tangled” might be the last Disney Princess movie, will Walt Disney close down the production line of Princess movies and concentrate on their Disney/Pixar movies(UP, Cars, Wall-E, Toy Story) to gain more revenue and benefit? That we will have to wait either the next Princess movie to come out, or never.

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2010/11/23/tangled-may-close-the-book-on-disney-princess-films/

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