Weekend Box Office Report: Easter Dips

Not quite a fruitful weekend for animation, considering the holiday and all...

Second place. The Boss Baby. Dropped 41%. Home did way better that weekend, so it looks like The Boss Baby will end up somewhere in the low-to-mid 160s, which is still pretty good. Worldwide it sits at $238 million, it is out everywhere now except in Kuwait and Poland. I guess it'll be another $300 million+ worldwide grosser for the studio. I wonder if they'll view it as a pass or a flop.

The little blue guys got hit even harder. Smurfs: The Lost Village fell 50%, an unusually big drop for an animated film on its second weekend. So much for taking advantage of that Easter timeframe, eh Sony? Domestically it's at $24 million and worldwide it's at $95 million. The last three markets are China, India, and South Korea. Could it triple its $60 million budget? Who knows, but I reckon the juice has run out and Sony might move onto other things.

All the way down in 24th place is ToonBox's Spark: A Space Tail. A movie that was completed in early 2016, screened to an audience at a film festival just about a year ago... Open Road Films sat on it, didn't ink a release date for a long, long while. Then they did, but didn't promote it. A trailer came out just a matter of weeks ago, and then it turned out that they had no use for it. It was dumped in a little over 350 theaters this weekend, not screened for critics, and the few reviews that seeped onto Rotten Tomatoes are pretty... Well... Unkind.

Makes me wonder how they'll handle Blazing Samurai and Arctic Justice: Thunder Squad, both of which are set to open next year and also don't carry any concrete release dates at the moment.

It opened with $112k. What was the point of even releasing it theatrically? Quite something, how an inoffensive, arguably DTV-grade picture like that can get a release this size while truly great works of animated art have to settle for tiny amounts of theaters. I was very curious about this picture for a long time, then the trailer showed up and while I didn't dislike what I saw, I did see that it was just another pic aimed at the roughly 6-10 set.

Sing and Moana still roll in some venues. The former: $270m DOM / $621m WW. The latter: $248m DOM / $637m WW.

GKIDS gave My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea an expectedly tiny release. $15k from 3 theaters.

No update on Your Name. yet.

Baby Beats Blue: 'Boss Baby' Tops Weekend, 'Smurfs' Opens Softly

Probably inconceivable back in October, DreamWorks' The Boss Baby may just secure the top spot on its second weekend.

Facing a pretty good-sized dip, the DreamWorks comedy is expected to take in around $25 million off of a $6 million Friday haul. Now that's a roughly 47% dip, but it would have it narrowly beating out Beauty and the Beast, which has entered the fourth weekend of its run.

That puts the picture on par with Home at the moment. That opened with $52 million and sank 48% on its second weekend, it too was a late March release. If The Boss Baby follows its trajectory, it should finish up with around $170 million domestically. Either way, it's going to be a domestic hit for DreamWorks. Now we shall see how the overseas grosses add up.

Smurfs: The Lost Village, Sony's all-animated restart of the Smurfs movie series, was no match for the baby. Opening soft with $4 million yesterday, projections have it at $13-14 million. A little lower than what The Smurfs 2 took in on opening weekend back in summer 2013. Given slightly better critical reception than its hybrid predecessors, Sony probably isn't worrying - the film is one of their cheapest to date. I'm hearing nothing but mixed things, but the consensus is basically "It's better than the hybrid movies." Some are saying it's pleasant and fun, others are saying it's mediocre and run-of-the-mill.

The film cost $60 million, and looks quite amazing on a budget that size. Shows that not every computer animated movie has to be this gargantuan $100-million production. Sony Animation has shown that time and time again, as has Illumination and other houses. The previous hybrids cost around $100-110 million to make, each... The second film's $347 million worldwide gross against that was what lead to this reboot.

So what went wrong? Audiences probably got tired of the schtick when Smurfs 2 was coming out, and didn't think this looked much better. I certainly had my doubts, instead of a fun adventure that respects the actually decent Peyo comics, it looked like a typical "kids" movie with forced "adult" jokes (haha, a Smurf is kicked in the groin!) and noise and such. Maybe the movie isn't just that, I don't know yet, but marketing can make something - regardless of how good or bad it may be - look crumby. With a smaller opening, it could still be pretty leggy.

Worldwide, it just has to top $150 million (2.5x the $60 million budget), which I think it will do with ease given the blue creatures' origins.

Your Name., in its limited run, debuted with $627k. Looks like it'll have a solid opening for an anime film. Hopefully it gets some traction...

UPDATE (4/10/2017): Totals are in...

The Boss Baby tops all at $26 million, down 47% from last weekend. This is looking at a Home run, pun shamelessly intended.

Smurfs: The Lost Village might've landed at #3, but took in $13 million - as expected - over the weekend.

Your Name. took in a solid $1.6 million. A wee bit below the $1.8 million Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' took in back in 2015, but I'll take what I can get. It isn't playing near me, unfortunately.

Sing still sings worldwide, now at $620 million. Moana is a few steps ahead at $634 million.

No Fooling: 'Boss Baby' Flies This Weekend

Fox and DreamWorks' marketing teams must've done something right...

The Boss Baby collected $15 million for its opening day, which could translate to a $50 million+ opening weekend gross. Basically, it's the next Home for the studio. Few had hopes for Home, projections had it in the mid-to-high 20s, low 30s at best... Then it dashed out of the gate with $52 million. Will The Boss Baby equal that? Top it? Or land somewhere below it?

Either way, it's thankfully not another flop for DreamWorks. As much as I don't want them to be rewarded for movies like these, I don't want to see animators get put out of a job. Even more surreal, it looks to top juggernaut Beauty and the Beast on the charts.

I'm honestly not surprised.

I know the theater I work at is just one theater out of 4,000+, buuuut... I'd say 90% of the customers there have all reacted positively to the posters and displays that we have. Things like "We gotta see that Baby Boss movie!" It kept making me think... "You know, this may not be a flop."

This is the fourth post-fallout success in a row for DreamWorks. Whether it was the marketing chief switch at the studio or not, they've been on steady ground. Home, Kung Fu Panda 3, Trolls, now this. Captain Underpants is the last Fox-distributed DreamWorks movie, and being an outsourced film, I don't think too much will be riding on its back.

UPDATE - Monday 4/3/2017

$50 million. Not too shabby. Quite a few millions above Kung Fu Panda 3 and Trolls, and just a little behind Home. With little family competition until the summer, I think Boss Baby should be fine. 3.0x multiplier at the minimum, which would translate to a $150 million domestic gross.

Consequently, The Lego Batman Movie lost over 800 screens, dropped 64%, and collected $750k for the weekend. It now sits at $172 million domestically and $297 million worldwide.

No big changes for Sing and Moana domestically, the former is at $614 million worldwide and the latter is at $628 million. Moana is now coming up on Big Hero 6's worldwide gross. Rock Dog lingers. Rose 11%, but it doesn't matter, the pic is still at $9 million stateside and about the same amount overseas.

Time to Cry: Full Trailer for 'The Boss Baby' Surfaces

Out in three months, DreamWorks' The Boss Baby got itself a full trailer...

Right off the bat, I wouldn't call this a good trailer. If you're new here, I have a particular frustration with American animated movie trailers. They aggressively dart from jokes to story bits to jokes to story bits, and when they end, I'm like... "Okay, what did I just watch?" But I don't review trailers for their editing, what's the footage like?


Well, this looks a little weird in some ways, but in other ways it looks like a typical lightweight animated comedy-romp. There's the frenetic tone, the one-liners, the goofy premise, and some inevitable gross-out humor. The trailer clarifies that a lot of it is pretty much happening in the older brother's imagination, which is kind of cool, but I can only imagine how they'll stretch that out to 90 minutes.

It's also interesting how the boss himself talks, but the other babies act like babies. It very much reminded me of the old Family Guy episode where Stewie, during his first birthday party, is trying to assemble a team out of the neighbor babies. They of course act like babies, much to his frustration. Anyways, in terms of the story? I'm pretty iffy on this one. The Boss Baby is pretty much spillover, it's a product of a short era where the studio was quietly regrouping after the fallout in January 2015.

Context: DreamWorks had a lot of box office misses over the span of two years, and only two pictures released during this troubled time - The Croods and How To Train Your Dragon 2 - made a profit. The final straw was Penguins of Madagascar, which posted very low numbers domestically. So in January 2015, DreamWorks shut down sister studio/veteran house Pacific Data Images, laid off over 500 employees, and drastically reduced the number of films on their slate. Then former CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg took it upon himself to really oversee the next couple of features, The Boss Baby included. It was pretty much in the can before Comcast stepped in.

Boss Baby could go either way. It could be a sharp, clever comedy like director Tom McGrath's third Madagascar installment, or it could be all over the place like The Croods, or it could be a plain-nothing movie like Turbo. It looks very, very hyperactive but there were some bits that made me laugh.

I actually am kind of digging the very soft animation style they went for. In a few interviews, some of the crew emphasized how they wanted this film to have a retro cartoony feel, and I definitely get a slight 50s vibe out of the whole thing. Everything looks kind of painterly and like something you'd see out of an old animated commercial or something. It certainly looks unlike many of DreamWorks' CG pictures.

The verdict? I really don't know. The story seems kind of there, but some of the humor is good, seems very jumpy, I like the look of it, and hopefully it's a solid comedy in the end.

What say you?

Nothing to Cry Over: Teaser for 'The Boss Baby' Debuts

We reckoned the teaser for DreamWorks' first 2017 picture, and their second-to-last film of theirs to be distributed by 20th Century Fox, would surface sometime this month in time for the release of Trolls. It is finally here...



Surprisingly... It looks like it could be fun.

The teaser isn't noise and ping-ponging between jokes and story points, it actually takes the time to set up the premise and work in some fun gags. I don't mind the look they're going for, it has a very soft, almost 50s feel to it, but the art direction in general is not dissimilar to the cartoonier CG stuff we've seen for over 10 years. What the trailer doesn't quite show is something reports touched upon: Apparently the baby only talks and acts like an adult in the older brother's imagination. I wonder how much they can get out of that for a roughly 90-minute movie. I've got some hope for it, for Austin Powers scribe Michael McCullers wrote it, and DreamWorks has made a few pretty good comedies before.

Ever since DreamWorks officially revealed this one, the opinions were either "it looks decent" or "it looks horrible". Yes, it's too safe and probably something DreamWorks shouldn't have blown $120 million on when much cooler projects languish on the wayside. I would've easily taken Bollywood Superstar Monkey and Me and My Shadow over this, but if it succeeds at being a very fun comedy that I'll want to watch again, I can't complain too too much. DreamWorks is now under the Comcast umbrella now, so it probably won't matter too much if this film flops, but it should still be a major concern because it's the animators who could get affected by this... And it has happened many times before at the studio. Not sure how things will flow with Comcast and changed management.

What say you? Did you enjoy the trailer? Do you think this film could be decent? Sound off below!