The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is a 2018 American Christmas fantasy film directed by Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston and produced by Mark Gordon and Larry Franco, from a screenplay by Ashleigh Powell.
Produced by Walt Disney Pictures with The Mark Gordon Company, it is a retelling of E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 short story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King", as well as of Marius Petipa and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1892 ballet The Nutcracker, about a young girl who is gifted a locked egg from her deceased mother and sets out in a magical land to retrieve the key.
The film stars Keira Knightley, Mackenzie Foy, Eugenio Derbez, Matthew Macfadyen, Richard E. Grant, Misty Copeland, Helen Mirren, and Morgan Freeman.
Composer James Newton Howard scored the film, adapting elements from Tchaikovsky's music for the 1892 ballet, while Gustavo Dudamel served as conductor, leading the London Philharmonia Orchestra.
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms premiered at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on October 29, 2018, and was released by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures in the United States on November 2.
[4] It received generally negative reviews, with criticisms of its story and Knightley's performance, although the film's visual effects and aesthetics were praised.
On Christmas Eve in Victorian London, Benjamin Stahlbaum gives his children Louise, Clara, and Fritz the presents his wife Marie had set aside for them before she died.
The Sugar Plum Fairy explains that Marie created this world as a young girl and that she animated everyone with a machine that can turn toys into real people.
She then reveals that she lied about Mother Ginger, who had resisted Sugar Plum's plan to take over all four realms in revenge for her perceived abandonment by Marie, and that the machine can turn this world's people back into toys as well.
[14] In December 2017, it was reported that Joe Johnston would direct 32 days of reshoots, written by Tom McCarthy, due to Hallström being unavailable.
[18] Andrea Bocelli and his son Matteo contributed the original duet "Fall on Me" for the film, which premiered on Dancing with the Stars' "Disney Night" on October 22, 2018.
[4] The film's status as a box office flop was attributed by TheWrap to a poor release date only two days after Halloween, a bloated budget and a lack of interest on the behalf of audiences in the Nutcracker concept.
[22] In the United States and Canada, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms was released alongside Nobody's Fool and Bohemian Rhapsody, and was projected to gross $20–24 million from 3,766 theaters in its opening weekend.
[23] It made $5.89 million on its first day, including $625,000 from Thursday night previews, the lowest figure for a Disney film released in over 2,000 theaters since The Finest Hours in January 2016.
The website's critical consensus reads: "Lacking a transporting yuletide story or dazzling dance routines, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is a hollow holiday confection that's lovely to look at – and easy to forget.
He went on to write, "Watching a visually spectacular but virtually soulless new family movie like The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, it's tempting to wonder if such eye-popping dreck has any hope of sticking with impressionable young audiences.
"[30] Alonso Duralde of TheWrap also gave the film a negative review, writing "The 'child travels to a magical land and learns things' trope has been the basis of many beloved stories, from The Wizard of Oz to The Phantom Tollbooth to The Chronicles of Narnia.