While Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun pushed a 13-year-old Christian Bale to the limelight, transitioning into a prominent adult actor wasn’t easy. It would be another 13 years after the release of Spielberg’s war drama before the actor would eventually land his footing in Hollywood, thanks to his brilliance in American Psycho.
But prior to skyrocketing to the top after playing the sadistic killer, Bale did star in a plethora of movies, which involved a record-breaking Disney musical. However, the Batman Begins Star doesn’t share fond memories of working in the musical, as it wasn’t the film he initially signed up for.
Christian Bale Starred in One of Disney’s Lowest Grossing Features
The ’90s were a golden period for the House of the Mouse. Considered the Disney Renaissance era, from ’89 to ’99, the Industry giant kept hitting it out of the park with almost all of its theatrical animated releases. And 1992 witnessed one of the studio’s best to date with Robin Williams‘ Aladdin, which grossed a mammoth $504 million worldwide. But on the contrary, 1992 also witnessed the studio releasing a live-action musical, starring Christian Bale, which became one of the company’s biggest box-office disasters to date.
While recent years have seen fans being disappointed by Disney’s practice of making less-than-stellar live-action musicals, it seems the company has always struggled with the genre.
Starring Bale as Jack Kelly, Newsies‘ story revolved around the Newsboy Strike in 1899. However, upon its release, the live-action musical was bashed by critics and failed to succeed at the box office, only managing to make a fraction of its budget. Made on a budget of $15 million, the movie garnered around $3 million, becoming one of Disney’s lowest-grossing live-action movies ever.
However, it did see a resurgence once it hit the home video market, and would eventually inspire a Broadway show, which would result in Menken and Jack Feldman scoring their first Tony win.
Christian Bale Wanted Nothing to Do with Newsies
Although Newsies did turn out to be a sort of success for the House of the Mouse in the long run, Bale wanted nothing to do with it after its failure. Considering he initially signed up for a pretty different film, which had nothing to do with a musical, Bale faced immense struggle as he had no prior singing training. Thankfully, the actor eventually got over this mishap and even shared a laugh, while reflecting on its legacy.
He said (via EW),
”Well, it’s nice that it achieved something!”, laughed Bale upon reflectin on its box-office debacle. “At 17, you want to be taken very seriously — you don’t want to be doing a musical… Time healed those wounds. But it took a while.”
However, this wasn’t the end for Bale and musicals, as two years later, the actor would go on to voice Thomas in 1995’s Pocahontas. Unfortunately, despite being an animated feature, it didn’t hold a candle to the company’s other major releases from that era.
Newsies is available to stream on Disney Plus.
