‘Arctic Dogs’ Bombs, Worst Opening Of All-Time In 2,800+ Theaters

This will be a surprise to almost no one, but Arctic Dogs received a frosty reception at the U.S. and Canada box office, opening in tenth place. No film in the history of cinema has ever opened more poorly on 2,800+ screens.

The film earned $2.9 million from 2,844 theaters. The previous worst-performing film in 2,800+ theaters was the Warner Bros. film Father Figures, which opened with $3.2 million in 2017.

Arctic Dogs was produced by Monika Bacardi and Andrea Iervolino’s Ambi Group and distributed by Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures (ESMP). It marked the first animated feature for both companies. When AMBI announced a distribution deal with ESMP last December, Iervolino said, “ESMP has outlined a masterful marketing and distribution plan that will allow this film to perform very well.”

The budget for Arctic Dogs is unknown. Ambi did not respond to an earlier Cartoon Brew request for comment.

Aaron Woodley, the director of Arctic Dogs, is no stranger to underperforming at the box ofice. The previous film he directed, Spark: A Space Tail, also played poorly with North American audiences, albeit on far fewer screens. The failure is more pronounced this time considering the scale of the release.

It’s not just audiences that ignored the film. Even film critics, who are obligated to review films good and bad, couldn’t be compelled to sit through Arctic Dogs. At the time of this writing, the film has just five reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, which we’d be willing to bet is the least amount of reviews ever published for a film opening on thousands of screens.

A couple other box office notes:

• MGM/UA’s The Addams Family took fifth place in North America on its fourth weekend, with an estimated $8.2 million. Its creepy thematics held up well over Halloween, dropping just 31% from the previous weekend. The film has grossed a respectable $85 million domestic to date.
• Makoto Shinkai’s Weathering with You launched in third place in China with a strong showing of $22.6 million. It has grossed around $160 million worldwide to date, and looks set to be one of the top 10 grossing animated release of the year even without a U.S. release. The film will launch in the U.S. through GKIDS next January.