Yahoo – Last year, the original Pixar film “Elemental” looked doomed with the worst opening weekend in studio history, but turned into the box office comeback of the year. DreamWorks Animation’s latest film, “The Wild Robot,” hopes to chart a similar path to theatrical success.
Despite rave early reviews, projections for the Universal release remain very low, with most projecting a start in the $20 million range similar to the $25 million start last weekend for Paramount’s “Transformers One.”
As an adaptation of Peter Brown’s book series, “The Wild Robot” is not strictly speaking an original film. It’s in the vein of literary adaptations DreamWorks has picked up dating back to its first big CG-animated hit, “Shrek,” which was loosely based on a children’s book by William Steig.
The most recent DreamWorks book adaptation, “The Bad Guys,” opened to just under $24 million in 2022 and grossed $97 million domestic and $250 million worldwide, prompting Universal and DreamWorks to greenlight a sequel for next year.
With its beautiful animation style and moving tale of a robot stranded in a forest that adopts an orphaned gosling, “The Wild Robot” has the potential to win over audiences and show similar legs to “The Bad Guys.”
If audiences embrace it as much as the critics, it could go even further, taking advantage of a lack of competing family titles in October and early November for a run similar to the $154 million domestic/$496 million global total of “Elemental.”
But the fact that “The Wild Robot” must take the long road to box office success compared to instant hit sequels to films like “Inside Out” and “Despicable Me” shows how much familiar characters and narratives have come to dominate the family market since the pandemic shutdown.
And sometimes even that is not enough, as Paramount is looking for “Transformers One” to leg out based on strong buzz from franchise fans, hoping that will win over moviegoers who weren’t originally sold on an origin story movie from the long-running series.
