Most Profitable

Funny how I keep stumbling across the money-making dynamics of cartoons.

Hollywood Sticks to What Sells and It's Not Comedies

... Although there is still some discrepancy as to whether or not Americans are abandoning the movie theater, studios have been focusing on the demands of their international consumers where box office revenues have been soaring. And U.S. comedies, unlike sci-fi thrillers, generally don't resonate abroad. ...

It appears international audiences are clamoring for animation and action, not comedies.

Nomura declares "animated films have been the most profitable genre since 2004, making a global average of $235 million per film". The action film genre comes in a close second, generating about $138 million per film followed by dramas and comedies. There is still some discrepancy as to whether or not Americans are abandoning the movie theater, [but] studios have been focusing on the demands of their international consumers where box office revenues have been soaring. And U.S. comedies, unlike sci-fi thrillers, generally don't resonate abroad. ...

I started noticing the steady surge of animated product in the early oughts. TV was steady (and slowly expanding), but every animated feature in release seemed to be pulling down big money. Naturally enough, there were more long-form cartoons being produced year by year.

So here we sit a decade later. Frozen continues to break records, Rio 2 approaches the half-billion dollar marker, and How To Train Your Dragon, the Sequel, is "under-performing" in the U.S. of A., but opening at #1 in a wide swath of international venues:

... The Fox-distributed family film was in 53 foreign markets overall, and finished No. 1 in 30 of them, bringing in $43.5 million from abroad . ...

Animation might be "cannibalizing itself" with the flood of new releases (please ignore the records that Disney and Illumination Entertainment/Universal set over the past two years), but even with all the ravenous gnoshing there continues to be a large number of cartoon features in the world marketplace.

Because despite all the media hand-wringing, entertainment conglomerates ... and smaller producers ... and medium-size producers ... are really, really good at reading balance sheets.