Thursday, April 25, 2013

Box Office Predictions

A futile exercise, but media writers do it anyway.

... This is the first summer movie season in recorded history where a Pixar/Disney film or a Dreamworks Animation film is not expected to be the top cartoon of the summer, if not the year. No this year’s animation contest at the box office will likely be won by … Universal?

Sure, Monsters University, which looks perfectly fine for a harmless piece of comic amusement, will likely make the usual Pixar $215-$245 million average, give or take 3D ticket price bumps and/or whether or not the film is better than Cars 2.

Epic will likely make healthy coin along the lines of Rio‘s $143 million domestic/$484 million worldwide and Dreamworks’ Turbo will be gunning for something approaching the Dreamworks normal of $150 million domestic and $500 million worldwide. And let’s not talk about Disney’s Planes.

The likely top grossing animated film of summer 2013 will be Despicable Me 2. The first film grossed $256 million in 2010, the highest grossing animated film ever not from Disney, Pixar, or Dreamworks. And there is no reason that the sequel, which will capitalize on the goodwill of the first film, shouldn’t approach if not surpass that total this time around. ...

Hey now. I can play this game ...

Unlike Forbes Magazine, my crystal ball is cloudy, but here's the way I believe the battle of the grosses will play out.

Pixar will be the top earner at the end of the summer season. Monsters, Inc. is a well-loved film, and how wrong can you go with a sequel?

MU -- $217 million (domestic); $310 million (foreign).

DreamWorks Animation is kind of a wild card. Staffers tell me that Turbo is an entertaining movie, but I have the reaction:

Yeah, but the leading man is a snail. Are people going to want to go watch a snail?.

Guess we'll find out.

Turbo: $160 million (domestic); $285 million (foreign).

Blue Sky Studios rolls out Epic. The trailers show this to be a visually beautiful feature, but William Joyce properties have not been treated kindly at the box office. Therefore ...

Epic: $115 million (domestic); $230 million (foreign).

Chris Meledandri's Illumination Entertainment was the first U.S. animation company that had a box office hit with a foreign-made animated feature. Despicable Me Uno cost $70 million to create and raked in a worldwide take of $543,113,985. My estimate is that Two will make slightly less than that:

DM 2 -- $190 million (domestic) and $311 million (foreign).

Now we'll wait a few months ... and see how far off the mark Steve is.




3 comments:

Floyd Norman said...

I expect all the films to do well. Who cares who comes out on top. There's enough money out there for all. Let's keep our workers employed. That's really what it's all about. Not another Mercedes for the fat cat producers.

Anonymous said...

Where's the projections for Cloudy 2?

Steve Hulett said...

Oh yes. Cloudy the Second, which is out in September.

From my visit there last week I know the picture is still in story, and there will be a LOT of animation going on between now and August.

I think it will do about as well as the original.

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