The Next Animated Contender

It's been a season of animated champions: Brave. Madgascar 3. The Lorax. All of them have broken the $200 million barrier in domestic grosses.

The next challenger for box office gold is the candidate from Portland's LAIKA studios, the up-and-comer ParaNorman, shambling into theaters on August 17th ...

At present, Rotten Tomatoes puts it near 70% fresh, with reviews like this:

... [A]t the tail end of the summer, along comes a movie proudly told in an old school animation style, from a tiny animation house and distributed by a studio known mostly for distributing arty fare like "Brokeback Mountain," that blows away all the slick studio confections both in terms of sheer visual wonder and (more surprisingly) emotional heft. ...

And it's want-to-see quotient is in the 90s.

The way theatrical animation has been rolling in 2012, I expect the picture will have a strong opening and end up with a healthy gross. Stop motion hasn't been as strong at the box office as pure CGI, but Norman looks poised to (maybe) break the mold.

And how wrong can you go with the first animated zombie movie?