WALL STREET SPUTTER WELL-REVVED,`CARS' STALLS ON DEBUT LOWER THAN EXPECTED $60 MILLION OPEN SENDS DISNEY STOCK DOWN.

Byline: GREG HERNANDEZ Staff Writer

BURBANK -- When it comes to most movies, a $60 million opening weekend gross would be cause for celebration. But in the case of ``Cars,'' that figure is being perceived by some as disappointing.

The latest feature from Pixar Animation Studios released by Walt Disney Studios opened at least $10 million below even the most modest predictions and caused the stock price of The Walt Disney Co. to dip slightly Monday before it rebounded later in the day.

When Disney released final weekend box office grosses Monday, they were more than $2 million below the $62.8 million estimate the studio had given a day earlier with Sunday ticket sales below what the studio had originally projected.

Disney spent $7.4 billion to buy Pixar earlier this year after marketing and distributing their six major hits starting in 1995. The most recent releases, ``The Incredibles'' and ``Finding Nemo,'' each had opening weekends of more than $70 million.

If adjusted for inflation, ``Cars'' had fewer ticket sales during its first weekend than the previous four Pixar films, including ``Toy Story 2'' and ``Monsters Inc.,'' according to Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo.

``It's still a high-revving opening but it's not on the high end of the road,'' Gray said. ``This is essentially the first Pixar movie without a human context and you need that to make it relatable. (20th Century) Fox had a similar problem last year with `Robots,' which did considerably less than its `Ice Age' movies.''

He predicts that ``Cars'' will gross more than $200 million domestically, making it one of summer's bigger hits but it should fall far short of the $339.7 million earned by ``Nemo'' and the $261.4 million taken in by ``Incredibles.''

Media and entertainment analyst David Miller, of Sanders, Morris, Harris Group in Los Angeles, had projected an opening weekend of $75 million to $80 million for ``Cars'' but thinks there might be an overreaction to the lower-than-expected debut.

``It's not a huge disappointment at all and you can't make a determination on the ultimate (gross) based on one weekend,'' Miller said Monday. ``Any kind of negative proclamations on Disney stock is really the wrong call.''

Miller believes the movie's running time of close to two hours might have impacted business (``Incredibles'' ran 83 minutes) and that the pre-release hype surrounding the movie may have resulted in some families sitting out opening weekend.

Gray noted that this is the first Pixar title to open when CG-animation has become somewhat ubiquitous with the release in 2006 of DreamWorks Animation's ``Over the Hedge,'' which is still in the top five; 20th Century Fox's ``Ice Age: The Meltdown''; Disney's ``The Wild''; and ``Hoodwinked'' from The Weinstein Co.

``There have been so many other animated movies in the market so `Cars' wasn't as much of an event because of that,'' Gray said. ``But you can't expect Pixar to constantly top itself because that would require them to constantly be making the same kinds of movies all the time and that would preclude them from really experimenting.''

Shares of Disney stock closed at $28.90 per share Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, down 43 cents, or 1.47 percent, per share.

greg.hernandez(at)dailynews.com

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(color) ``Cars'' had a big opening this weekend at the box office, but Wall Street didn't exactly celebrate with a victory lap. Shares of Disney, which produced the animated feature, dropped Monday as revenues fell short of studio expectations.