DreamWorks’ Original ‘Forgotten Island’ Flops With $12.8M Opening Despite Rave Reviews And Audience Scores

Forgotten Island was largely forgotten by moviegoers this weekend, assuming enough of them knew about it in the first place.

The DreamWorks Animation original opened to just $12.8 million domestically, finishing fifth despite playing in 3,548 theaters. Internationally, things were even worse. Comscore estimates a $5.64 million overseas weekend, bringing the film’s international total to $7.85 million and its worldwide haul to $20.65 million.

It’s a painful result for original animation, despite many audience protests that they want new stories. And especially difficult to explain given the film’s critical and audience reception. Directed by Puss in Boots: The Last Wish filmmakers Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, Forgotten Island has earned 95% from critics and 96% from verified audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, along with an A CinemaScore and an excellent 82% “definite recommend” from PostTrak. In other words, DreamWorks doesn’t appear to have a word-of-mouth problem; it has a getting-people-into-the-theater problem.

Crawford and Mercado have at least some precedent for recovering from a disappointing start. The Last Wish opened to an almost identical $12.4 million in December 2022 (although that was impacted by a historically strong storm hitting much of the country, no such excuse this time) before extraordinary word of mouth helped carry it to $186.1 million domestically and around $480 million worldwide. Its holiday positioning helped, and nobody should expect Forgotten Island to duplicate that run, but its enthusiastic audience response offers some hope that this weekend isn’t the end of the story.

Next weekend will be crucial. A strong hold could suggest word of mouth is beginning to do its job. A normal second-weekend drop would make an already painful opening considerably harder to overcome.

With its digital release on the horizon, Coyote vs. Acme added another $1.9 million domestically in its fifth weekend, bringing its domestic total to $58.4 million. The $60 million mark is now well within reach, depending on how long Ketchup keeps it in theaters. Its theater count fell from 3,035 last weekend to 1,905 this weekend, so we’ll have to see what the distributor has planned for the first weekend in October.