‘Teen Titans Go! To the Movies’ Launches In Fifth Place With $10.5 Million

Last weekend, a major American film studio released a 2d animated feature into 3,000+ theaters for the first time since 2009. Warner Bros.’ Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, directed by Peter Rida Michail and Aaron Horvath, debuted in the no. 5 spot with $10.5 million.

The film opened below projections, which had mostly been in the mid-teens, but it’s not a complete letdown either. That’s because the film only cost around $10 million to produce – compare that with the $60-150 million cost of most cg animated features. For example, Sherlock Gnomes, opened earlier this year with almost the exact same amount – $10.6 million – but that film had a reported budget of $59 million, around 6x higher than Teen Titan Go!’s budget.

With such a low budget, TTG will make back its production costs and then some when it goes to home video. It also fulfills its role as a promotional vehicle for the tv series and the licensing and merchandising programs surrounding the franchise. In short, it’ll end up doing just fine, though it’s not the kind of breakout hit that’ll get other U.S. studios excited about producing more 2d animation projects.

According to Deadline, first-day box viewers for the film were comprised of 46% kids, 22% parents, and 31% general audiences.

Two other animated features also landed in the top 10. In its 3rd weekend, Sony Pictures Animation’s Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation grossed $12.3 million, good for fourth place. The Genndy Tartakovsky-directed film has earned $119.2m domestically and $165m internationally, for a $284.2m global total.

In seventh place on its 7th weekend, Disney-Pixar’s Incredibles 2 scored $7.1m, lifting its overall domestic to an all-time animation record of $572.7m. With $426.3m from international territories, the Brad Bird film is at $999.1m. It’ll reach the $1 billion mark today. With major markets like Japan, Germany, Italy, and Spain yet to come, Incredibles 2 will easily become Pixar’s biggest all-time global grosser by the time it’s all done. The record is currently held by Toy Story 3 with $1.067 billion.