“Gravity” Breaks October Box Office Record

The jury is still out on whether we should call Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity an animated film, but one thing we can call it with certainty is a blockbuster. The film opened this weekend in the U.S. and Canada with a massive $55.6M (est.), setting a new box office record for openings in the month of October. The film also surprised the film industry by earning 80% of its gross from 3D screens. The 3D share of most features nowadays ranges between 30-55%.

The animation and vfx created by Framestore comprises eighty percent of the film’s visuals. There is little doubt that the makers of the film had an animator’s mindset when they made the film. The film’s exec producer Chris DeFaria, who has produced numerous animated films, explained their approach in a 2012 interview:

“Instead of trying to create real people and what they’re doing, let’s turn it around and create almost an entirely animated film and then backwards engineer the people into that film. As a matter of fact, let’s not even engineer the people into the film, let’s engineer their faces. So you’ve got these little faces inside these little helmets.”

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 dipped a respectable 37% to an estimated $21.5M and a second place finish. In its first ten days, Cloudy 2 has earned a solid $60.6M in the US. The film is being rolled out slowly overseas, where it has grossed $11 million to date. It’s still too early to make predictions about how it will perform in international territories.