I'm a week late, due to the relative lack of feature news here and there, but...
Last weekend's box office...
(Belated) Weekend Box Office Report
Well, to the shock of no one, The Weinstein Company's belated release of the Americanized French movie Leap!... Didn't quite leap last weekend. It barely raised its heels. Debuting with a very soft $4.7 million, the attendance is much lower than that of Doogal's opening weekend results. Mr. Weinstein's "re-imagining" of the pretty okay-received Ballerina also scored mostly negative reviews. Look closer, though... Forget Rotten Tomatoes' almighty percentage number and look at the tiny-print average rating.
You'll see that the original Ballerina - which has around a 73% on the site - has a 5.7 average rating based on the 20 or so European reviews of the picture. The American score rounds out to 4.9, so that's not really much of a night-and-day difference. Either way, it seems like Weinstein didn't enhance nor completely destroy the film... Proving that he should've just, once again, left it alone.
Releasing it at the end of August also made no difference whatsoever. The film probably would've performed similarly if released in March or April. From everything I'm hearing, it's really just a movie for the younger set and not a full-blown faaaaamily picktcha.
Behind Leap! is The Emoji Movie, still legging it up, looking to perform similarly to Sony Pictures Animation's first film, Open Season. Down 43%, it's likely to top $80 million here, and it has collected $145 million worldwide. Not amazing, not terrible. It's coming close to tripling its $50 million budget. I still don't think that Sony will really view it as a big success or anything, because they didn't say that about Smurfs: The Lost Village, which also had - and tripled - a small budget. If Sony Animation wants that proverbial big-time blockbuster that'll put their highest-grossing film to shame (The Smurfs, $563 million), they may get the picture: Something like The Emoji Movie is not the answer.
Though it opened after Sony's film, The Nut Job 2 is in the next position, as it slips further and further. It fell a pretty rough 54%, currently stalling at $22 million here - just a tad bit above the first film's opening weekend. 3 1/2 years ago. It's only out in a few territories right now, bigger markets like Brazil and France don't get it until mid-September and October respectively. According to IMDb, this movie will open in Australia in August of 2018... Damn! Apparently financed by some Chinese companies, the movie doesn't appear to be set for a Chinese release. I wonder where ToonBox's future lies...
Despicable Me 3 saw a little re-expansion, alongside some other hit films this year. Baby Driver's back in theaters as well, if you haven't seen that one yet, see it before it goes! Despite the expansion, Despicable Me 3 didn't rise, it dropped about 15%. Not terrible, but not great. $254 million here, $975 million worldwide. It's probably going to hit the big billion, though it is out everywhere now, so how much further will this behemoth go?
Far behind is Cars 3, dropping 32%. It is crawling its way to $150 million. It'll expand this Labor Day weekend and get there, as it's getting the usual Labor Day Pixar boost. Up to $325 million worldwide, it is millions away from topping the worldwide gross of The Good Dinosaur and not being Pixar's lowest-earning film. Interestingly enough, the picture opened in China with an okay-ish $10 million. Legs can go either way for the Chinese release, but I doubt this will be some breakout over there... But stranger things tend to happen in movieland, especially animationland. Who knows, Cars 3 and its unabashed American-ness could somehow resonate with Chinese audiences and gross $300 million over there, saving the film from being a box office loss... But I'm pretty sure it'll just come and go over there, and that the film overall will miss $400 million worldwide.
Anyways, all is quiet in the water until The Lego Ninjago Movie comes out. At this point, I'm seeing a Storks-esque performance, for a think the marketing for this one has been ho-hum overall. The trailer was really cool, but it doesn't have that presence, as far as I can see. I expect somewhere in the low-to-mid 20s, down from my original mid-30s prediction I made back in December. Either way, it's going to do fine.
In other animation news, the up-and-coming feature animation side of long-running VFX house Original Force saw a good-sized rumble...
Original Force Animation Loses Co-Presidents
Though their debut feature-length animated movie isn't out till next spring, the co-presidents of Original Force Animation are out: Penney Finkelman Cox and Sandra Rabins.
Two veteran animation producers with a background in DreamWorks and Sony Pictures Animation, they apparently want to return to movie producing after spending so much time building another studio. In a statement, the two indicated that Original Force was up and running with a "strong team" in place, the very team that made their Duck Duck Goose happen. Of course, as we all know, that's being released by Open Road in April and a trailer has been out for some time.
Cox and Rabins will, however, continue working with Original Force Animation. The two are attached to the studio's next film, which got a rather low-key unveiling, Ten Lives. I can only guess that it's about a cat who somehow gets one extra life. Duck Duck Goose, Ten Lives, seems like the studio will be making movies with titles based off of animal-based sayings and puns. What's next? Baa Baa Black Sheep? Holy Cow?
Anyways, I still wish the best for Original Force. While I have mixed thoughts on the Duck Duck Goose trailer, I am willing to be surprised. Will they make a real splash (like the poster for the above film says)? Or will they be another animation studio making stale kidvid-style pics? Who knows. Apparently a lot of projects they had in development, such as QQ Speed and Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, were shuttered. Some of those, I think, sounded pretty cool.
J. J. Abrams' Next Paramount Animation Film
Sometimes, big bits of news will slip right by my radar...
One of them happens to be from the enigmatic Paramount Animation slate, a line-up of animated features that got off to a rocky start.
Anyways, this bit of news is OLD. Back in June 2016... Yes, this is very embarrassing... Den of Geek announced that J. J. Abram is directing a new film for them, and no, it won't be that previously-announced Beastlies film...
Instead, it's called The Flamingo Affair...
So far, all we know is this: It's a Las Vegas heist movie starring pink, long-necked birds. Pamela Pettler, who wrote three spookier animated features including the PG-13 adaptation of the short film 9, will pen the script. The other two animated films she worked on were Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and the mo-capped Monster House. Pretty knockout combo, there.
Reported by The Tracking Board back then, it's very possible that this is all a hoax, because TB has been rather hit-or-miss. Some scoops are right, others turned out to be fake... But I think it's a fun premise that, if done right, could be a really good comedy. You know, a comedy that's not a matinee for 8-year-olds. The Vegas setting, flamingos, it being a heist film... What could go wrong? While Paramount's new animation initiative hasn't yet scored a home run that isn't a Nick-based property, it does sound like it has a lot of potential.
Paramount Animation has announced several projects, a lot of which haven't gotten off the ground and are presumably dead: Lino di Salvo's project, John Kahrs' Shedd, Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Giant Monsters Attack Japan, an untitled sci-fi story, and the webcomic adaptation The New Kid. Slated films include the Nickelodeon show-based The Loud House Movie, the belated sequel to Gnomeo & Juliet, a third SpongeBob feature, and Ilion's Amusement Park... Which is supposed to start a Nick show. So mostly Nick stuff and Nick show pilots. A live-action/animation "Nicktoons" project is also on the slate.
Perhaps the safe stuff is just back-up, and that they'll eventually spread their wings. I don't know, they're still being very secretive. I was just hoping they'd be firing on all cylinders by now, considering that the new plan was put into action for two big reasons... One of those reasons being Gore Verbinski's quirky, game changing Rango. I was hoping to see more Rango-type films... Instead, after SpongeBob deux, we got Monster Trucks and were denied a wide theatrical release of The Little Prince. The rest of the films on the slate don't quite rivet me right now.
Anyways, The Flamingo Affair sounds like a lot of fun... And again, I know, I should've reported on this a year ago, but here we are. If I recall correctly, I completely missed the first-ever announcement of the 2018 picture Arctic Justice: Thunder Squad. So yeah, sometimes I make the occasional slip-up. Carry on.