Why Disney's 3D Re-releases Failed

UPDATE: Despite the numerous reports saying that Disney shelved The Little Mermaid 3D, the recently released Diamond Edition of Peter Pan features both an insert and a full-length trailer advertising it.  A few days ago Disney released the exact same trailer online, however this trailer didn't make any mention of 3D, and only advertised a Blu-ray release for this fall.  This post will be updated again once Disney officially clears up the confusion regarding The Little Mermaid 3D.

For those of you who haven't heard, Disney has scrapped the planned theatrical 3D re-release of The Little Mermaid this September, and it's unlikely we'll be seeing more 3D re-releases anytime soon.  This news comes in the wake of Disney's previous 3D releases not matching up to the success of The Lion King 3D.  The re-releases of Beauty and the Beast and Finding Nemo each earned a little less than half of The Lion King's earnings, while Monsters Inc. only earned roughly a third.  With these numbers, it's easy to see why Disney lost their faith so quickly.  But these re-releases didn't have to perform as badly as they did.  There was definitely a public interest in the idea of seeing a classic film in a new way, let alone on a big theater screen.  The reason Disney's re-releases failed is a dual-headed failure in marketing on Disney's part.

The Little Mermaid 3D may never see daylight, but it didn't have to be that way

1. Audience Overload

When The Lion King 3D unexpectedly performed well, Disney must have gotten a big sugar rush  of excitement and announced four 3D re-releases throughout 2012-2013, three of those in 2012 alone.  That's simply too much for an audience to handle in a year.  Disney should have spaced them out to about one or two a year, or they simply could have nixed the Pixar movies and released classics that people actually wanted to see in theaters again.

2. Bad Timing

This one mostly pertains to Monsters Inc. but there's an argument for the other releases as well.  The reason Beauty and the Beast and Finding Nemo had more success was because Disney released them during times when there were hardly any high profile movies coming out.  But the problem with all three of the releases that came out was that they were already available on home video, whereas  The Lion King DVD had been out of print for a number of years.  Beauty and the Beast 3D was originally scheduled for release before the Blu-ray, but it kept getting delayed and eventually shelved because Disney didn't want to "over-saturate the market"(how ironic).  By the time it hit theaters, audiences had access to the new home video issue of Beauty and the Beast for over a year.  Where Disney really faltered was with Monsters Inc. Disney, for some reason, decided to release it during one of the busiest times in movie-going.  It got crushed by movies like The Hobbit, Les Miserables, and Django Unchained.  

The cancellation of The Little Mermaid 3D is unfortunate because it had a similar background to The Lion King 3D (out of print home video) and I believe that it could have been the most successful out of the four re-releases.  And who knows? Maybe we'll see it sometime down the road much like Beauty and the Beast.  But for now, Disney has delivered a pretty bad stab wound to the novel idea that they created in the first place.