Two snowbound movies from Disney’s 20th Century Studios are getting an early digital release. The Call of the Wild and Downhill are coming to digital tomorrow, just about a month from their theatrical releases, due to the coronavirus pandemic that has shut down movie theaters worldwide.
The Call of the Wild and Downhill will be available for digital purchase tomorrow, March 27th. They follow in the footsteps of other Disney films to break the theatrical window and come home early, including Frozen 2 and Onward.
The Call of the Wild will be available for $14.99, and for that you can see Harrison Ford survive the harsh Yukon with a CGI dog. The film is an adaptation of the classic Jack London novel, and it did pretty well at the box office with $107M. If only it hadn’t cost about $125M. I didn’t really dig it because the CGI clashed with the story’s natural environments, but would make an entertaining family movie while everyone is stuck inside.
Downhill, a remake of the far-superior Swedish dark comedy Force Majeure, is available for $9.99. The American version is led by Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, centering on a couple vacationing in the Alps only to have the husband abandon his family during an avalanche. Despite the cast and okay reviews out of Sundance, it failed to find an audience and made just $8.9M. I enjoyed it enough, and Louis-Dreyfus puts in one of her best big-screen performances, but I don’t know if couples kept in close quarters for weeks at a time want to watch another one crumble, comedy or not.
