Young Woman and the Sea Is the Most Important Movie of 2024 for Disney

The Walt Disney Company has a lot of high-profile releases for films in 2024 through various divisions of the multimedia conglomerate. From 20th Century Fox’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Pixar’s Inside Out 2, Marvel Studios Deadpool & Wolverine, and Walt Disney Animation’s own Moana 2, it is an interesting year for the company following up a very disappointing 100-year anniversary celebration in 2023. Yet the film Young Woman and the Sea, released through Walt Disney Pictures itself, might be one of the most important films of the year for the studio.

Young Woman and the Sea is based on a true story and stars Daisy Ridley as Gertrude Ederle, chronicling her early life and her historic 1926 21-mile swim across the English Channel, becoming the first woman ever to do so. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the king of blockbuster films known for the Pirates of the Caribbean films, National Treasure, Top Gun: Maverick, and many more, the movie was originally intended to be released on Disney+. Yet following Disney’s shifting focus away from streaming exclusives and the movie’s extremely strong scores from test audiences, Disney gave the film a theatrical release, be it a limited one.

The film has earned positive reviews from critics, yet it seems like a movie many audiences will miss out on despite the uplifting nature of the movie being one that audiences would connect with. Here is what makes Young Woman and the Sea so important for Disney and how much hangs in the balance of this mid-budget biopic.

A Return to Disney Mid-Budget Films

While Disney is best known for its animated classics, Walt Disney himself started to move the company into making live-action feature films, the first being 1950s Treasure Island. Live-action became as crucial to Disney’s brand as their animated movies, making live-action films that could truly be described as “family” movies, not only ones little kids can enjoy but also those aimed at young audiences and adults. For millennials, in particular, the live-action Disney films stand out just as much as the films of the Disney Renaissance.

While Pirates of the Caribbean stands out, there were also mid-budget films that became timeless classics: Holes, The Princess Diaries, and Sky High. Even apart from those, Disney made plenty of beloved mid-budget films based on true stories that could best be described as “school movies,” the type of movie that a school would be comfortable playing as a bonus for the kids on half days or ways to supplement a lesson. These movies were obviously educational but also entertaining in a way that was better than nothing or even a made-for-TV special. These were true story movies like Remember the Titans, Miracle, or Secretariat. That is the type of movie that Young Woman and the Sea feels like, which is an incredibly uplifting film based on a true story that plays as an incredibly conventional crowd-pleaser.

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Another term for them that was used internally at Disney was “brand deposits.” As outlined by The Wrap, these were movies that, while not making a lot of money, served the underlying ethos of the Disney brand that also felt like Disney in spirit. These movies used to be a main part of the Disney brand and were making them well up until the mid-2010s, but following box office disappointments like McFarland, USA, Million Dollar Arm, and The Longest Hour, Disney started to move away from these types of movies. This also coincided with Disney moving into fewer films but bigger movies. Films based on IP, such as Marvel and Star Wars, and live-action movies were mainly remakes of their animated classics. It feels hard to imagine films like Remember the Titans now fitting into Disney’s release schedule, and if they did, they would send it to Disney+.

While their big-budget IP move worked for a while, as the studio dominated the box office from 2016 to 2019, it was not fully sustainable. In 2023, Disney saw major box office flops like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Marvels, The Haunted Mansion, and Wish. These movies cost so much and, therefore, needed to make a lot of money. They could not afford to be respectable, and they had to dominate. In comparison, Million Dollar Arm, which came out in the summer of 2014, grossed $36 million against a $20 million budget. It was not record-breaking but a respectable return on investment, but that wasn’t good enough for Disney. Yet if Young Woman and the Sea does well at the box office, it might show Disney that there still is a market for these types of movies in theaters and one they might embrace for much smaller wins.

Disney Bumped Young Woman and the Sea to a Theatrical Release

Young Woman and the Sea was originally set to debut on Disney+, following in the tradition of other films that no longer fit the studio’s big blockbuster theatrical push, despite some like Disenchanted and Hocus Pocus 2 being sequels to theatrical movies or Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers which just six years ago would have been a big screen blockbuster event. Yet various studios have now seen that streaming is not only not a financially sustainable business model but can also turn a nice profit by releasing previously planned streaming films in theaters.

Two recent examples were Warner Bros. Discovery’s decision to release Evil Dead Rise in theaters after initially planning a Max debut. With a budget of $15 million, Evil Dead Rise grossed $67 million domestically and $147 million worldwide. Then, earlier this year, Paramount Pictures bumped up the adaptation of the musical Mean Girls from a Paramount+ movie to an early January release, and the film earned $72 million domestic and $104 million worldwide against a $36 million budget. In both cases, these studios gained money they otherwise would not have, so it made sense for Disney to try the same with Young Woman and the Sea.

Sadly, Disney has not put its full marketing force behind Young Woman and the Sea. The first trailer was not released until April 11, 2024, a little over a month before the film’s release. Unlike most Disney films, the movie opens in a limited release instead of a wide release. The hope is that it will build a buzz in the coming weeks, but Disney will soon shift gears to marketing Inside Out 2, which opens on June 14, 2024. In addition, Disney is not releasing the film theatrically in Canada, which will hurt its domestic box office as those numbers are factored in.

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While hindsight is 20/20, and we now know that Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and The Garfield Movie would open to the worst Memorial Day weekend since 1995, it feels like a missed opportunity for Disney not to release Young Woman and the Sea over the holiday weekend. Even if just in limited release before moving wide on May 31, 2024, the movie could have been sold as a moving, uplifting film to see over the holiday weekend. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s previous movie, Top Gun: Maverick, currently holds the record for the biggest Memorial Day opening weekend, and Bruckheimer has opened plenty of movies over the holiday weekend, including the last three Pirates of the Caribbean films.

It feels like Disney has the potential for a feel-good winner on its hands that it didn’t know what to do with. They would have back in the 2000s, but Young Woman and the Sea does not fit their recent model of theatrical films. This means that a good movie might not find its audience in theaters at a time when movie theaters need films that will draw audiences out.

Young Woman and the Sea Is What Disney Needs Right Now

In 2022, Disney released Crater on Disney+, a kid-oriented sci-fi coming-of-age story that MovieWeb gave a positive review for but also commented on the type of movie that Disney has a company that seems to see no value in. Less than two months after the film premiered, it was removed from the platform. A lot has been said about how they “don’t make them like they used to,” but it is hard to look at Crater, The One and Only Ivan, or Young Woman and the Sea and say that. These are the types of movies Disney used to make and audiences loved. Of course, the big blockbusters will get all the attention, but these smaller-scale stories also have the impact of leaving lasting impressions.

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Young Woman and the Sea is a throwback to an era of Disney movies that lives in the hearts of audiences, millennials in particular, but now seems like a distant memory. Yet while all of their attention is on making sure Inside Out 2 can rebrand Pixar or Deadpool & Wolverine can fight off accusations of superhero fatigue, Young Woman and the Sea seems like the type of movie that, if marketed correctly, particularly to an older audience, could be a small hit that looks good for the company.

While Elemental had a disappointing opening last year, it became a sleeper hit thanks to strong word of mouth; the same could be true for Young Woman and the Sea. No budget is reported for Young Woman and the Sea, but there is a chance this inspirational throwback could be just what audiences feel like they have been missing from theaters and Disney in particular. In a summer movie season filled with movies that have underperformed in their opening weekends, maybe the box office needs something a little old-fashioned. Maybe what it needs is just Young Woman and the Sea. Young Woman and the Sea is now playing in a limited theatrical run.