“The Wild Robot” looks for box office riches by taking the “Elemental” route

Last year, the original Pixar film “Elemental” seemed doomed with the worst opening weekend in the studio's history, but ended up being the box office comeback of the year. DreamWorks Animation's latest film, The Wild Robot, hopes to follow a similar path to box office success.

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

An adaptation of Peter Brown's book series, The Wild Robot is not, strictly speaking, an original film. It's a type of literary adaptation that DreamWorks has embraced since its first major 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 in 2022 to just under $24 million and grossed $97 million domestically and $250 million worldwide, prompting Universal and DreamWorks to greenlight a To be continued next year.

With its beautiful animation style and moving story of a robot stranded in a forest who adopts an orphaned gosling, The Wild Robot has the potential to capture audiences and show similar legs to The Bad Guys. If audiences embrace it as well as critics, it could go even further, making up for a similar success to “Elemental” with $154 million domestic and $496 million in October and early November use worldwide.

But the fact that “The Wild Robot” has a 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 since dominated the family market the pandemic shutdown dominates.

And sometimes even that isn't enough, as Paramount is looking to release “Transformers One” based on strong enthusiasm from franchise fans, hoping to win over moviegoers who might not initially be interested in an original story -Film from the long-running series.

“The cost-related selectivity that families display in deciding whether or not to see a film is evident in real time. Something like Despicable Me that families already know and enjoy can easily attract people. In this case, familiarity creates confidence that going to the theater is worth the time, energy and money,” said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst at Comscore.

Pixar's “Coco,” the last original animated film to gross over $500 million worldwide, opened with $72 million over five days in theaters over Thanksgiving weekend 2017. “Shrek” opened with $42 million before adjusting for inflation in 2001, while another children's book adaptation, “How to Train Your Dragon,” opened with $43 million in 2010. Both generated $200 million in domestic revenue.

“The Wild Robot” is earning as much or more critical acclaim than any of the franchises these films spawned, but it may well have to settle for an opening under $30 million. The overwhelming success of “Inside Out 2” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” shows that families haven't given up on movie theaters in the slightest, but such pursuit of “Wild Robot” perhaps suggests that parents are less likely to Try something new unless you are confident that you and your children will enjoy it, which is why word of mouth is even more important after publication.

“It used to be that theatrical and home video were the clear benchmarks, with merch sometimes included, but now, with streaming, the formula is just completely different,” Dergarabedian said. “Now it takes months and months to really see how much an animated film resonates with audiences, and it takes everyone in the room at a studio from different departments to sort it all out.”

Complicating matters for both “The Wild Robot” and “Transformers One” is that Warner Bros. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” has been well received by families and young adults. According to data from exhibition sources, the share of moviegoers ages 13 to 24 increased 16 points in the second and third weekends of the Tim Burton sequel, compared to the Gen X-driven opening weekend.

That's one of the reasons “Beetlejuice 2” has held up so well, earning nearly $250 million domestically after snagging the top spot against “Transformers One” last weekend.

With three well-reviewed, family-friendly, yet tonally unique films now on offer, and the R-rated “Joker: Folie a Deux” being next weekend's top new release, it will be interesting to see how audience interest develops this weekend Whether “Transformers One” and “The Wild Robot” can have long and profitable theatrical runs without cannibalizing audiences’ interest in each other.

In the meantime, movie fans will finally get the chance to see Francis Ford Coppola's long-running and critically polarizing “Megalopolis” as Lionsgate releases it in theaters this weekend.

It's been a long journey for this film, in which Adam Driver and Giancarlo Esposito fight over the future of humanity as a brilliant architect and corrupt mayor. The film was first conceived by Coppola in 1977, shortly after the completion of Apocalypse Now, but was shelved after a series of box office failures until Coppola decided to finance the film himself and sell his Sonoma wineries to celebrate the 120th anniversary -Funding the film's million-dollar budget.

When it premiered in Cannes, “Megalopolis” divided critics sharply, achieving a 52% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Screenings of the film for Hollywood's top studio executives resulted in the film being largely passed on until Lionsgate struck a distribution-only deal in June, with Coppola covering marketing costs.

It's unclear how much Coppola, who has expressed plans for other film projects, will need to earn from “Megalopolis” to continue turning his cinematic visions into reality. But it is clear that “Megalopolis” will probably do worse than “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1,” the first part of a planned four-part series that writer-director Kevin Costner partially financed himself and which was released in theaters by “Chapter 2” has been shelved indefinitely after grossing just $29 million in the US from an $11 million opening.

“Megalopolis,” with an opening price of $5 million to $7 million, is expected to cost about half that, and given its mixed reception, it's unlikely to find an audience outside of Coppola's loyal fans and the most ardent cinephiles.

For Lionsgate, this marks the studio's fifth consecutive release with an opening weekend under $10 million. But unlike some previous failures like “Borderlands,” Lionsgate has no costs beyond distribution costs and a percentage of box office revenue. Given that low bar, insiders tell TheWrap that Lionsgate should recoup its costs on “Megalopolis” within a week of its theatrical release.

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