Now with beaucoup Add On.
The Nikkster informs us that Universal and Chris Meladandri's Illumination Entertainment have themselves a hit:.
... Sources are telling me that early North American box office numbers show that Universal Pictures is going to enjoy something it hasn't had in a very long time: a big hit film. That's because rival studios say that weeks of great parent-kid family tracking for Despicable Me 3D today is translating into "amazing" attendance of $22 million for what could be a $55M-$60M weekend opening despite having two other 3D family films in the marketplace. ...
Universal's last animated feature Curious George ran up a total gross of $60 million after several weeks in the marketplace. DM appears to be doing almost as well in its opening weekend, and gives Hollywood its fourth cartoon hit in six months: Two from DreamWorks Animation, one from Pixar, and now one from Illumination Entertainment-Universal. ...
Add On: The Reporter weighs in with figures for Friday:
Universal's 3D animated feature "Despicable Me" -- a potential boxoffice champ this weekend -- proved pretty lovable for moviegoers in its first day of release on Friday.
The family comedy rung up a nifty $21.7 million during its first day in release. That topped the daily rankings and put "Despicable" on track for a much better than expected three-day opening of more than $50 million, with Saturday and Sunday matinees certain to bolster its weekend success. ...
Add On Too: Wowee yowee. For its opening weekend, Despicable Me collects way more than originally anticipated:
1) Despicable Me -- $60.1 million
2) Twilight: Eclipse -- $33.4 million
3) Predators -- $25.3 million
4) Toy Story 3 -- $22 million (-27.3%; second best hold in Top Ten)
5) The Last Airbender -- $17.1 million.
And while we're at it, there are two DreamWorks Animation Features still in release -- Shrek Forever After at $233.7 million, and How to Train Your Dragon at $216.9 million.
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7 comments:
Good marketing and a strong advertisement campaign is the the name of the game.
Congrats to all of them over at Illumination.
It's good to have another player in the game.
Marketing wins it.
Up till now, most would have said the disastrously baffling and misfired pre-marketing was definitely NOT what was in this movie's favor--
Judging from most of the positive shrugs at RottenTomatoes ("Hey, it's cute, and you've probably already seen TS3 by now"), think we're just dealing with a summer with less competition this year.
Also, the final marketing seems to have followed the practice of other non-DW/Pixar films, tried to outflank audience reaction, hidden away the leads, and focused attention on the cute side-business characters that would presumably be more breakout-popular:
The last few ads tried to persuade audiences that the movie was really about little yellow critters who resembled the Little Green critters of another movie this summer.
Whatever the reason, Mr. Meladandri appears to have the touch.
And this picture was made with a different biz model than the other animated players -- doing the development work in Southern California, subbing the production out to France.
Reputed production cost: $70 million.
It's success is good news for development/ bad news for animators. Production is again shipped overseas but this time with positive results.
Hopefully other studios don't follow suit, although they probably will.
Yeah! Good news for European animators! We sure as hell need a boost like that. Let's hope other studios follow suit.
Off course, whatever the marketing strategy is, it helps a lot that the film storywise is way better than Shrek 4 and that overall it's a good film.
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