Was Rereleasing Oliver & Company (1988) the Pettiest Studio Move of All Time?

When my editor invited me on his podcast a couple months ago to discuss Oliver & Company, I was fairly certain that I’d seen this film before.

It had been almost a quarter century since I’d seen it, and I had almost no memory of it beyond a dog wearing sunglasses or whatever. But I had a faint memory of a theater trip with my parents to watch that dog in sunglasses sing his heart out.

But then I looked at the release date: November 18, 1988.

It didn’t make sense. I would’ve been 2.5 years old at that time. And I am certainly not one of those brain genius weirdos that remembers their days in diapers. (I think most of those people are lying anyway.) Had I made up this memory? Was I living in a corrupted simulation?

I consulted Wikipedia to try and make sense of it. That’s when I noticed an important detail that would explain everything: “On March 29, 1996, Disney rereleased the film.” Ah, of course.

That was only the first part of the sentence, though. Here’s the second part: “…in direct competition with All Dogs Go To Heaven 2.” Incredible.

Rereleasing animated films years later used to be a common strategy for Disney, but this one was on another level. The ruthless suits at Big Mouse saw a new cartoon dog movie coming from MGM and decided to sabotage its theatrical release by resurrecting their own cartoon dogs on the same opening weekend. It’s despicable, it’s ruthless, and I respect it so much.

Here’s the thing: It totally worked.

The third part of that Wikipedia sentence (it’s a very long compound sentence): “…grossing $4.5 million in its opening weekend and $21 million in total, taking its lifetime domestic gross to $74 million and its worldwide total to over $121 million.”

And how did All Dogs Go To Heaven 2 fare? Poorly! Not only did the film get panned by critics, it only pulled in $2.2 million on its first weekend, and its total gross was a mere $8.6 million. And that’s after they shifted from a holiday release date in 1995 because of another cartoon dog movie. (That would be Balto. Remember Balto?)

As if that wasn’t enough, All Dogs Go To Heaven 2 held the title of “worst opening weekend for an animated film playing in 2000 theaters” for more than a dozen years until something called Delgo came along in 2008. (If you’ve seen Delgo, please comment or email me. I need to know how and why.)

Here’s the other thing: The original release of Oliver & Company was pretty spiteful too.

After spending a few years as an animator at Disney, Don Bluth burned a few bridges on his way out and created a bit of a rift, for reasons that I won’t get into. (We’ll save that for another issue.) So what did Disney do years later? They slated Oliver & Company to be released the same weekend as Bluth’s The Land Before Time. Another battle between animated family films.

Bluth won that battle as The Land Before Time topped the box office in its opening weekend with $7.5 million, compared to Oliver & Company, which grossed $4 million (yes, less than the first weekend of its rerelease) and finished fourth at the box office. But he lost the war; Oliver & Company eventually bested The Land Before Time, out-earning Bluth and his dinosaurs by $7 million in the U.S. and Canada. Oliver & Company even became the first animated film to gross more than $100 million worldwide during its initial release.

What a wild box office journey for a very unremarkable film. (Apologies to everyone who loved Oliver & Company as a child. Don’t rewatch it.)

Oliver & Company is now streaming on Disney+ and is available to rent elsewhere.