A Historic Box Office Weekend: Five Of The Top Ten Films Are Animated Features

This weekend, while Hollywood box office pundits occupy themselves over a trivial nonstory like the slightly-better-than-expected opening of the live-action horror film Terrifier 3, they are missing a historic box office event staring them straight in the face. For what is likely the first time ever, five animated features are in the top 10 of the U.S. box office.

We can’t remember the last time there were even four animated films in the top 10, much less five. Some intrepid box office historian will have to look at the data to see if this has ever happened before, but right now, we’d be comfortable betting that this is a milestone first in U.S. box office history.

It’s only Saturday, so we don’t have final numbers, but studios already have a pretty good sense of the top 10 order. Here are the five animated features and their likely rankings at the U.S. box office: The Wild Robot (#2), Transformers One (#5), Piece by Piece (#6), My Hero Academia: You’re Next (#8), and The Nightmare Before Christmas (#9). [UPDATE: Piece by Piece overtook Transformers One in the final weekend rankings and the two films switched places with each other.]

This weekend’s box office is just the latest piece of evidence to support the argument that animation is evolving in the U.S. marketplace. Animated films in the U.S. have long been viewed as just one of two things: a broad four-quadrant product that appeals to every member of the family and where anything but a huge opening is deemed a failure OR an obscure indie/foreign production that barely registers a dent at the box office.

Now we’re starting to find the middle of these two extremes. The three new releases are a documentary, a hand-drawn foreign import from Japan, and a revival of a decades-old stop-motion film. These are the type of films that a decade or two ago would not be appearing on any kind of top 10 list, but theatrical animation has matured at the marketplace and the demand for animated films has broadened to the point where niche titles can generate significant revenue even when there are multiple other animated features in theaters.

Let’s dig deeper into the animated features in the top 10, starting with the new releases:

First up is Morgan Neville’s documentary Piece by Piece, released by Universal’s Focus Features. The quirky biopic of music star Pharrell Williams is drawing attention for its technique, which uses a cg Lego style to document Williams’s rise to the top of the music industry. Produced for $16 million, the film launched in 1,865 theaters and is looking to gross around $3.5 million [UPDATE: $3.8M estimated final]. That figure is weaker than anticipated; Focus was projecting around $5-7 million for the opening weekend.

But let’s look at this from another perspective: Piece by Piece will be the highest-grossing animated documentary in U.S. history by the end of the weekend. Animated documentaries have traditionally opened in the five- and six-figure range, not millions of dollars. No animated documentary appears in the top 50 documentaries at the box office; Piece by Piece will easily achieve that and more. This could very well herald the beginning of more high-profile feature-length animation documentaries.

The soft opening however does put a dent in Piece by Piece’s awards season future. There had been a sense that the film could be a contender for year-end feature animation honors, but it simply doesn’t have a lot of buzz around it. Piece by Piece launched with polite yet reserved reviews at Telluride and holds just an 81% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences like the film far more, giving it a 92% RT score, but they’re also not turning up in the expected numbers. This unconventional title may yet exhibit long legs at the box office, but its awards potential is now in question, especially in a year with so many other stellar animation titles.

Tensai Okamura’s My Hero Academia: You’re Next, distributed by Toho International, is the fourth U.S. theatrical release in the popular franchise that takes place in a world where the majority of people have superpowers. Opening on 1,845 screens, it’s currently targeting around $3m. Here are the previous opening weekends for U.S. releases of the franchise: 2018’s MHA: Two Heroes ($1.3m), 2020’s MHA: Heroes Rising ($5.8,), and 2021’s MHA: World Heroes’ Mission ($6.2m). The three previous films were released by Funimation, but Japanese company Toho has taken over U.S. distribution for this fourth release as part of its new strategy to expand in North America.

The final new release of the weekend is a revival of a classic: Henry Selick’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. The 31-year-old stop-motion Disney film has often been re-released during the Halloween period. Its 30th anniversary re-release last year pulled in a $4.2 million opening weekend on its way to a $9.8 million. The current re-release is looking to be around $2.1m [UPDATE: $2.3M estimated final] from 1,700 theaters. The film has now grossed nearly $90m lifetime since the Tim Burton-developed project was first released in 1993.

The highest-grossing animated title of the weekend is Chris Sanders’s The Wild Robot, which is eyeing around $13.8m [UPDATE: $13.4M estimated final] in its third weekend. If that figure holds, the key Oscar contender will have grossed $84.1m after three weekends.

The Dreamworks Animation feature is showing a great hold, declining just 27% from the previous weekend. It will even outgross WB’s Joker sequel, which was released only last weekend.

Paramount and Josh Cooley’s s Transformers One is looking at $4.1 million [UPDATE: $3.6M estimated final] in its fourth weekend. Even though the film cracked $50 million yesterday, expectations were clearly higher for this $75 million production, which according to its producer, was intended to be the launch of a new animated franchise. A theatrical franchise is now unlikely following the performance of this initial installment.

Even though every film is not performing at anticipated strength, the expansion of the animation marketplace is a noteworthy development worth celebrating. This weekend represents a major turning point for theatrical animation and signals that the medium’s future is brighter than ever.