Movies

Last year, the original Pixar film “Elemental” looked doomed with the worst opening weekend in studio history, but turned into the box office comeback of the year. DreamWorks Animation’s latest film, “The Wild Robot,” hopes to chart a similar path to theatrical success.

Despite rave early reviews, projections for the Universal release remain very low, with most projecting a start in the $20 million range similar to the $25 million start last weekend for Paramount’s “Transformers One.”

As an adaptation of Peter Brown’s book series, “The Wild Robot” is not strictly speaking an original film. It’s in the vein of literary adaptations DreamWorks has picked up dating back to its first big CG-animated hit, “Shrek,” which was loosely based on a children’s book by William Steig.

The most recent DreamWorks book adaptation, “The Bad Guys,” opened to just under $24 million in 2022 and grossed $97 million domestic and $250 million worldwide, prompting Universal and DreamWorks to greenlight a sequel for next year.

With its beautiful animation style and moving tale of a robot stranded in a forest that adopts an orphaned gosling, “The Wild Robot” has the potential to win over audiences and show similar legs to “The Bad Guys.” If audiences embrace it as much as the critics, it could go even further, taking advantage of a lack of competing family titles in October and early November for a run similar to the $154 million domestic/$496 million global total of “Elemental.”

But the fact that “The Wild Robot” must take the long road to box office success compared to instant hit sequels to films like “Inside Out” and “Despicable Me” shows how much familiar characters and narratives have come to dominate the family market since the pandemic shutdown.

And sometimes even that is not enough, as Paramount is looking for “Transformers One” to leg out based on strong buzz from franchise fans, hoping that will win over moviegoers who weren’t originally sold on an origin story movie from the long-running series.

“The cost-driven selectivity that families bring into whether or not they see a movie is playing out in real time. Something like ‘Despicable Me’ which families already know and enjoy can get people in easily. In this case, familiarity breeds confidence that it’s worth the time, energy and money to go out to the theater,” said Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

Pixar’s “Coco,” the last original animated film to gross over $500 million worldwide, opened to $72 million over five days on Thanksgiving weekend in 2017. “Shrek” opened to $42 million before inflation adjustment back in 2001 while another children’s book adaptation, “How to Train Your Dragon,” opened to $43 million in 2010. Both cleared $200 million in domestic grosses.

“The Wild Robot” is earning critical acclaim as strong or perhaps stronger than any installment of the franchises spawned by those films, yet could very well have to settle for an opening below $30 million. The wild success of “Inside Out 2” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” shows that families have not abandoned theaters in the slightest, but such tracking for “Wild Robot” perhaps suggests that parents are less likely to try out something new unless they’re convinced they and their kids will enjoy it, making post-release word-of-mouth even more crucial.

“It used to be that theatrical and home video were the clear metrics with sometimes merch being taken into account, but now with streaming it just makes the formula so different,” said Dergarabedian. “Now it takes months and months to really see how much an animated film makes an impact on audiences, and it takes everyone in the room at a studio from different departments to sort it all out.”

Further complicating matters for both “The Wild Robot” and “Transformers One” is that Warner Bros.’ “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” has found considerable traction with families and young adults. According to data from exhibition sources, the audience share of moviegoers age 13-24 has increased by 16 points in the second and third weekend of the Tim Burton sequel’s run compared to its Gen X driven opening weekend.

This is part of the reason why “Beetlejuice 2” has been able to hold so well, approaching $250 million domestically after holding on to the No. 1 spot last weekend against “Transformers One.”

With three well-reviewed, family friendly yet tonally unique films now on offer and with the R-rated “Joker: Folie a Deux” being the top new release next weekend it will be curious to see how audience interest shakes out this weekend and whether “Transformers One” and “The Wild Robot” will be able to have lengthy and profitable theatrical runs without cannibalizing audience interest in each other.

Meanwhile, cinephiles will at long last get a chance to see Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating and critically polarizing “Megalopolis,” as Lionsgate brings it to theaters this weekend.

It has been a long road for this movie starring Adam Driver and Giancarlo Esposito as a brilliant architect and a corrupt mayor clashing over humanity’s future. The film was first conceived by Coppola in 1977 shortly after completing “Apocalypse Now,” but was shelved after a string of box office failures until Coppola decided to fund the film himself, selling his Sonoma wineries to fund the film’s $120 million budget.

Upon its premiere at Cannes, “Megalopolis” sharply divided critics, carrying a 52% Rotten Tomatoes score. Screenings for the film for Hollywood’s top studio execs led to the movie largely being passed on until Lionsgate reached a distribution-only deal in June, with Coppola covering the marketing costs.

How much Coppola, who has voiced his plans for other filmmaking projects, needs “Megalopolis” to make to keep bringing his cinematic visions to reality is unclear. But what is clear is that “Megalopolis” is likely to do worse than than “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1,” the first of a planned four-part series partially self-funded by writer-director Kevin Costner that had the release of “Chapter 2” indefinitely put on hold after it only made $29 million in the U.S. from an $11 million opening.

“Megalopolis” is tracking to open to roughly half that at $5-7 million, and given the mixed reception is unlikely to find an audience outside of Coppola’s devoted fans and the most fervent of cinema lovers.

For Lionsgate, this will be the fifth straight wide release for the studio with an opening weekend of below $10 million. But unlike some past recent misfires like “Borderlands,” Lionsgate holds no expenses beyond what it paid to acquire the distribution costs along with a percentage of the box office. With such a low bar, insiders tell TheWrap that Lionsgate should recoup its costs on “Megalopolis” within a week of theatrical play.