It’s been a while since we’ve seen an original DreamWorks animation feature come with such a superb reception that can put parents to tears, and we welcome The Wild Robot to the party for making sure gracious efforts to do so as we head into Halloween season. The $35 million opening in North America isn’t a renaissance, you see. Still, it’s the highest-earning domestic weekend for an original animated feature since Onward‘s $39 million debut before the world tumbled with COVID times.
An A from CinemaScore, highly positive reviews, and the added value of having Lupita Nyong’o and Pedro Pascal onboard will keep this science fiction survival film moving. But hang on a second. Why would Universal cherish such a performance for these numbers when it was more of a relative number to debut around $60 million a decade ago? Probably because much DWA fare has dipped in recent times, and even folks could see legs prop up for The Bad Guys (opened to $23 million and legged to $97 million) or when you’re on the wrong end with Pixar’s Lightyear that crashed and burned after a $51 million opening. To be fair, DreamWorks did experience a taste of defeat recently with Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, which opened with a poor $5.5 million debut but had limited marketing and direct competition with Pixar’s Elemental and Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Original animated films need a re-popularity once more, as we can’t always rely on the following IP installment to come to save the day (looking at you, Shrek 5). But this feels like a long-awaited victory lap for Dreamworks with The Wild Robot, so hope will prevail.
In other news, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has passed $250 million domestically after a $16.04 million fourth weekend. It’ll continue the momentum to cruise along to $400 million worldwide, which should be a hopeful conversation for next weekend. Tim Burton and Michael Keaton can still show they got it on the latest IP blockbuster train. Transformers One, as predicted, will continue fumbling its way as it has not even topped $40 million domestically in its second weekend. Animation conversion allowed Paramount to relish a fitting chapter. Still, it took two steps back as A) no one asked for another Transformers feature and B) the series already witnessed its towering glory when converted to the big screen in 2007 for several years.
Devara Part 1 took in $5.6 million in its debut, and Speak No Evil earned $4.3 million in its third weekend. Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis bombed because Coppola, while revered with some of the best film classics in cinema, hasn’t restored himself to that box-office glory since his 1-2-3-4 punches in the 1970s (The Godfather and its infamous sequel, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now). This was “more for the film cinephiles” than it would be banking on a return to form. So, a $4 million opening fits the bill and will only serve to bite Lionsgate once again for not rejuvenating the house of Jigsaw. At the very least, you get what was promised with grandeur and excess.
Deadpool & Wolverine will be hitting PVOD shortly but should get to pass Barbie’s $636 domestic total before the fanfare dies out. This is the leggiest of the Deadpool films and the highest earning, so we’ll see if Deadpool Part 4 ropes in Tom Holland for another buddy comedy to test another live-screen dream-up.
Oh, and My Old Ass expanded into 1,390 theaters with a $2.22 million weekend.
Next weekend, we will see the release of Joker: Folie a Deux, White Bird, Monster Summer, Things Will Be Different, and The Forest Hills.
