Tuesday, March 18, 2014

At DreamWorks Animation

Barrons tells us:

Last week, DreamWorks Animation's dog-and-boy film Mr. Peabody and Sherman was labeled a flop after it took in just $32.5 million domestically during its opening weekend. However, Peabody isn't rolling over just yet. It made $21.5 million domestically this past weekend, enough to take the top spot during a slow patch. And the second-week drop was smaller than some analysts expected. ...

[DreamWorks Animation] hasn't had a $200 million domestic grossing film since How to Train Your Dragon in 2010. Since then, Pixar topped the $200 million mark with Brave; Disney Animation with Tangled and smash Frozen; Universal with Despicable Me; and Warner Brothers with The Lego Movie. ...

But actually, staff at the Glendale campus aren't morose. As one artist said to me: "We got a Number One movie this week, and we'll take it." The question is, how will P & S hold up when Miss Piggy and friends enter the marketplace on Friday?

Animation is wrapping up on How to Train Your Dragon II, and only lighting and surfacing remain to be done. Home, the short for which is displayed below, comes out in the Fall.



A staffer noted:

Home has a lot fewer major characters than most of our movies, so rigging was easier, we didn't have as many complicated rigs to do. ...

I've got no idea what Home's final budget will be, but DWA usually produces $150-170 million dollar features. By the accounts I've heard around the studio, the picture is funny and fast-paced. DreamWorks Animation hasn't had a lot of luck with its recent originals (The Croods excepted), but maybe Home will break with recent box office history and have big returns.

If so, it'll mean that the majority of DWA's 2014 feature slate will be winners.

1 comments:

David said...

"DWA usually produces $150-170 million dollar features. "

Which is why P & S's $32.5 million domestic opening is perceived as a "flop" . Make the movies for $70 - $80 million range like Illumination and that $32.5 million opening looks a lot less like a "flop". Didn't the Lego Movie cost $60 million. That's more like it.

I'm not sure if P & S is a flop in the long run ... probably not as bad a write down as Guardians or Turbo (or Bee Movie) . Hopefully HTTYD 2 makes up for it .

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