Cavemen, cold settings, and the coin...
First Full Trailer for Early Man Debuts
At long last... A full trailer for Aardman's upcoming plasticine-mation film is here!
It looks a lot different from what I initially expected. It's truly a cavemen-meets-modern-world kind of story, and a much more modern world than I thought. The trailer, editing-wise, is actually pretty messy and all over the place, but the visuals are gorgeous and the scale looks massive. Bigger than previous Aardman pictures, I'd argue. All the details, the designs, it's all very, very pretty to look at. Despite the trailer's presentation, there are plenty of good laughs in here. Particularly the "kill him slowly" and stadium stumble bits...
Anyways, it's Aardman. That's all I need to know in order to get onboard. The UK gets the film on January 26th, we get it the same weekend as Marvel Studios'Black Panther, February 16th. That's also the weekend after Sony Animation/Animal Logic's Peter Rabbit, and the release is being handled by Lionsgate, so I don't really think that it's going to make much of a mark here in the states. It's sure to make some good bank throughout Europe, though. I guess we should just be grateful that it's getting a wide American release to begin with...
Now I wonder when Lionsgate will release a trailer here. Will they just re-use this one? Or cut up a completely different one? Because we didn't even get the teaser here, they're - expectedly - slacking. Lionsgate's next family release - My Little Pony: The Movie - is next month, so I expect it turn up then. Part of me hopes we actually get it in time for the release of Lego Ninjago at the end of the month...
Olaf Songs & Coco Updates
You think you've heard enough of the Frozen featurette that's being attached to Pixar's next original? Well, new, tiny samples of the songs are out...
Well, they certainly sound very... Erm... Frozen. They're just small little bits, so I don't have any firm opinions. I'm numb to Frozen, so nothing really stuck out to me in these snippets. What's more interesting to me is that a bit of news confirms that the featurette will play a big part in setting up the sequel, which will not be titled Frozen 2.
On the Coco end of things, we're finally getting a legitimate, full, 2 1/2-minute trailer sometime soon. The Alberta Film Ratings trailer page, always reliable it is, confirms this. It's not surprising that a trailer for Pixar's next is around the corner, being a fall animated release from one of the Walt Disney Company's animation houses, and usually the full trailers for those debut around September. Usually in time for the family movie that opens every late September. This year, that very family film is Warner Animation Group's The Lego Ninjago Movie. Similar fare like My Little Pony will follow next month.
Many have noted that Coco has been (in terms of the marketing) playing second-fiddle to Olaf's Frozen Adventure. The campaign for Pixar's Day of the Dead tale started with a great teaser, but eventually it quieted down throughout the summer, as the first trailer (really, more of a second teaser) didn't create much of a stir. At least with the general public, on the Internet the movie unfortunately has created one pool-pah after the other. Various little bits and pieces of the picture came about throughout the summer, but I feel most of the promotion came from director Lee Unkrich himself.
I have... A lot of thoughts on Coco and its box office prospects, let's just put it that way for now. Initially I was confident that the picture was going to do fine, but now? Not so much. Will I detail my skepticism on here later? Maybe, but I'll give you the skinny... I'm concerned. Very concerned. This picture needs to be a hit, and as the days go by, I'm really beginning to think that Disney's marketing department has little confidence in it and are positioning the Frozen short as its booster. Not a horrible thing to do, I mean, other floppy Disney releases could've benefited from this kind of luxury... But yeah, it all implies that The Walt Disney Company is a bit worried about Pixar's latest original movie.
That isn't good, fellas. A Pixar film shouldn't ever really be in trouble, though box office worry-warting about this studio's output has been a thing since, say, the release of Monsters, Inc. Hit after hit, it seemed impossible... Pixar simply couldn't have a box office loss, till The Good Dinosaur showed that even they weren't invincible. Coco, I thought, had "hit" written all over it because it's the usually different and fresh sort of story you come to expect from Pixar, while Good Dinosaur was a strange and divisive anomaly whose performance could be chalked up to certain things outside of the movie itself. (i.e. lazy marketing, Star Wars.)
Anyways, I wonder if Coco's new trailer will start a last-minute aggressive marketing campaign that will tout the movie as an event. Either that, or it'll just be another trailer and the film will have to rely on Anna, Elsa, Olaf, Sven, and company to get a desirable opening week gross.
Weekend Box Office
Most of the animation packed up and went home.
An animated movie also no longer holds a certain record: The biggest opening for a September release. Sony Animation's Hotel Transylvania 2 handed the crown to the gargantuan It, which scored $123 million on its opening weekend, proving once again that R-rated films, the horror genre, and non-summer/holiday season releases can be heavies. I have yet to see the film, but I am looking forward to it, and I can totally see why it exploded. Hey, here's a radical idea... Can we some day get an animated adaptation of a Stephen King novel?
As my writing buddy Mister Coat joking told me, "You know what to do, Genndy. Send in the clowns!"
Anyways...
Leap! fell 49%, it's up to $15 million in the US, $98.9 million everywhere. Close to the one-oh-oh. In a way, the Weinstein Company did do something right - they helped get this small French-Canadian production past one-oh-oh at the worldwide box office.
The Emoji Movie tumbled 53%, $82 million here, $170 million everywhere.
While Despicable Me 3 still rolls in over 1,000 theaters, it fell 62%. Ticket-sales wise, it's still the least-attended film in the series, domestically. Matter, that does not... The film grossed $1 billion worldwide, becoming the 6th animated film ever to hit the mark. It now shares the ranks with Toy Story 3, Frozen, Minions, Zootopia, and Finding Dory. What gets there next? I'm thinking The Incredibles 2, if not that, then... Secret Life of Pets 2? Toy Story 4? That untitled LAIKA film? Will some pretty successful animated film from the past 7 or so years get a sequel that unexpectedly spikes like Despicable Me 2 did? Maybe one of a wrecking variety? I don't know!
The Nut Job 2 got it rough once again, falling 72%. $27 million here, $36 million everywhere. It had some domestic legs, but it's not enough. The $40 million picture, perhaps, should've been a direct-to-video cheapquel. With all due respect to the filmmakers who actually tried to make this sequel better than the maligned first movie, it perhaps was not meant for theaters: A sequel few folk asked for, and quite frankly, from what I saw of the film (and I saw big chunks of it at work), it seemed like one of those harmless CG kids' movies you'd see on an early noon weekday on Cartoon Network.
Cars 3, after a turbocharged surge over Labor Day weekend, lost nearly 2,000 of those screens and popped all four of its tires as a result. Down 83%, it's pretty harsh for a post-Labor Day Pixar drop. It's at $350 million worldwide, nothing special.
Captain Underpants still unravels somewhere in America, but the domestic gross is the same. $73 million here, $104 million everywhere, still not out everywhere else. Should comfortably land somewhere above $110 million when all is said and done.