The CG-animation Ceiling

The Common Room Other Animation
#1

Looking at a list of all CG-animated features released in the States to date (66 movies as of today per Box Office Mojo), it’s interesting how there seems to be a ceiling of about $120 million worldwide box-office results for films made at independent studios…of, if you will, the non-major CG studios.

On the other hand, the CG-animated features made by the “big guys” have a floor of $140 million worldwide box-office results.

Anyone care to speculate why? At least two obvious possibilities present themselves off the bat:

  1. the non-major studios don’t provide content of quality comparable to what the big studios provide;
  2. the comparatively lower marketing and distribution of the non-majors relegates the movies to lower box-office performance.

On a personal note, and as an example, I liked Igor by Sparx Animation. Aesthetically, it had very nice, offbeat character design and unpredictable dialogue/humor. It’s a bit of a puzzler why it wasn’t more popular, unless a generally held factor as above holds true.

For clarification and qualification, here are some assumptions:

Pixar, PDI/DreamWorks, and Blue Sky are The Big 3. Some might say Pixar is the Big 1, no others need apply. However, looking strictly at box-office performance, all three studios regularly produce films at the high end of the box-office performance range.

Disney, Sony Pictures, Illumination, Animal Logic, Aardman, and ILM are The Next 6. All of them produce films that can be predicted to at least earn their production costs back and can perform on par with The Big 3, even though some don’t. [Note: At this writing, Legend of the Guardians is at $139 million worldwide; however, it’s still in release worldwide and will likely come in at more than $140 million…also, Rango by ILM has yet to be released, but from the look of it, and based on ILM’s reputation, it’s reasonable to speculate that it will do better than $140 million worldwide].

Any other studio produces a CG feature that will make no more than $120 million worldwide. These non-major independents rarely make more than double their production budgets and often do less worldwide box-office business than they cost.

Further, few if any of these non-majors are fully producing CG features yet to come. It could be that the trend of independent CG features peaked in 2008 (there were eight of them that year) and is now winding down, so that only The Big 3 and The Next 6 will be able to successfully put out a CG feature in the States.

[By the way, I exclude from these considerations any CG-animation hybrids like Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and any motion-capture “animation” like The Polar Express.]

Apologies for the long-winded post in hopes of further discussion. If anyone cares to dispute or fact-check anything herein, that’s great!

Cheers! Steve

#2

Hmm, last I checked, LotG was under $100 million at the box office. Guess it must have been popular outside of the US, or had some serious legs.

On topic: Without heading too much into a potentially controversial topic, box office revenues are rather like votes. Basically, there are two basic types of people who will watch any particular movie, as there are two basic types of voters who will vote for a particular political party.

  1. The base. These are the people who would go to see anything of the basic type of film, regardless of its quality, the equivalent of a political party’s loyal voters. In the case of CG animated films, this would consist of kids and their parents. Honestly, while there is some great stuff aimed at kids, experience with my nieces nephew (combined with my own memories of childhood), suggest that they don’t really care that much about quality, and will watch basically anything that holds some element of appeal to them, and animation always seems to intrigue them. It is also possible for a company or franchise to develop a loyal base, which will add to this percentage of revenue. Pixar is the obvious example, and have it to the extent that any film they release is guaranteed to do well at the box office (a privelage they have well and truly earned), but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if Dreamworks and Blue Sky have a sizeable fanbase.

  2. The swinging viewers, the obvious counterpart to the swinging voters. Basically, a studio has to earn these viewers for every film they put out. This can be done through the quality of the film or through advertising. The latter makes it particularly clear how the major studios are able to bring in the numbers with relative consistency. It’s helpful to look at Dreamworks in this instance. All of their films are well-advertised, which explains how they consistently get good box office revenue for their films. From my recollection, though, they lack the overall consistency of Pixar in this field. While I haven’t researched the numbers, I recall that generally their better films sell more tickets. The Shrek franchise is a bit of an anomaly after the first one in this regard, but that’s because of its place in popular culture (one could apply a similar argument to Toy Story 3’s record-breaking sales). Such things would actually constitute a fanbase for a particular franchise as opposed to a studio, so should go in category 1.

Basically, the lesser studios can get in the kids (category 1), but lack a significant fanbase (category 1) and struggle to put out significant advertising (category 2). If the film is of sufficient quality (category 2), or is part of a franchise that has mustered its own fanbase (category 1, though I can’t think of a film released by a lesser studio to which this would apply), then it can break past such limitations.

Long story short, you’ve basically got it right, as far as I can see, I just explained it in a bit more depth.

#3

And a hearty thank you for that in-depth explanation! Interesting concept of the “swinging viewers,” and great point about DreamWorks’ focus on advertising.

Another component worth pondering when it comes to worldwide appeal is what drives a particular international distributor’s decision to release a particular film. Case in point, nintendofreakgcn, as you’re Down Under: Alpha and Omega appears not to have been released in Australia. Why not? Have the powers that be decided that a non-major CG feature isn’t worth the effort? Or is Alpha and Omega slated for future release there?

Crest Animation is an interesting example of a business model that might survive comparatively low box-office numbers. Not sure what they’d consider a worldwide Alpha and Omega take that would greenlight Norm of the North (with polar bears!). However, it could be that $40-odd million worldwide is cause for excitement among Crest investors in India.

Cheers! Steve

#4

Here’s a list of all the U.S. theatrically released CG-animation features that fell below the $120 million worldwide box-office “ceiling” for small, independent studios:

Barnyard: The Original Party Animals
Hoodwinked!
Planet 51
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
The Wild
TMNT
The Tale of Despereaux
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Space Chimps
Valiant
The Ant Bully
9
Fly Me to the Moon
Astro Boy
Alpha and Omega
Happily N’Ever After
Igor
Doogal
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
Everyone’s Hero
The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything
Battle for Terra
Roadside Romeo
The Ten Commandments
Delgo
Kaena: The Prophecy

These films are listed by worldwide box-office performance in descending order.

Just curious as to how folks rank these in order of most liked to least liked. It would also be interesting to see if some folks have seen none of the above films, or perhaps feel that they are best left to moulder on the rubbish heap of the animation world. Better living through research! Inquiring minds want to know!

As an example, here’s my ranking:

Igor [most liked]
Barnyard: The Original Party Animals
Hoodwinked!
Planet 51
The Tale of Despereaux
The Wild
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
Valiant
The Ant Bully
Everyone’s Hero
Happily N’Ever After [least liked]

#5

Well, I’m a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan, and thought that TMNT made at least $130 million at the box office, but that might have been worldwide. It’s probably actually a rather rare case of popular expectations working against the film. Basically, TMNT didn’t have the Shredder, and while he is only one villain among many in the comics and the most recent cartoon series, there are far too many people who still see the 80s cartoon as the entire franchise.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is another anomaly. While it was never going to get the massive box office revenues of the live-action films, I’m honestly surprised that it didn’t attract more people who had seen the earlier films (by which I mean pretty much everyone) to at least see it for a quick bit of harmless entertainment (which it is very good for, much like the TV series that followed from it). The frankly lousy character models probably had something to do with it, as they were plainly visible in the advertising.

I saw Astro Boy and also rate it as a bit of harmless fun. In this case, I’m not sure it had the built-in fanbase of TMNT or Star Wars. A lot of people have heard of Astro Boy, but I haven’t come across that many people who are serious fans of it. Heck, I hadn’t seen any incarnation before this one, and only saw it because I knew from TMNT that Imagi were pretty good at animating action.

I haven’t seen any of the other films on the list, but I’ve gotten the impression that most of them were forgettable at best, and didn’t come from studios with the money to advertise them effectively. Even in the case of Jimmy Neutron and the various VeggieTales movies, which had some degree of familiarity with audiences, they were only appealing to niche markets of very young children, and completely failed to catch the 13-30 crowd (with the exception of parents, who even then were probably trying to get the kids to see something else - I certainly would rather have seen even a lesser Dreamworks film than any of those).

Say what you will about the relationship between popularity and quality in the upper echelons, but people are pretty good at avoiding complete and utter tripe.

#6

I’ve only seen 7 of the ones on your list (4 in theaters because there was nothing better to see), JustSteve, because most didn’t look worthy of going to the theater for and there are movies ahead of them in my Netflix queue. However, I plan on watching them all at some point.

I’m looking at BoxOfficeMojo’s rankings of computer animated films domestically. On your list, the top two are from Paramount; they obviously had the marketing on Nickelodeon and perhaps promised better humor than the other movies. TMNT has different circumstances because it’s part of a franchise and I remember it being hyped. Hoodwinked did get a decent amount of advertising, if I remember correctly, but the cheap animation in the commercials may have scared off people from seeing it. Tale of Despereaux likely seemed too wholesome and not edgy enough for moviegoers (not just “edgy” but lacking personality). Planet 51 looked kind of cheesy, that’s all. The Wild had awful character designs and didn’t have a funny trailer. Star Wars: The Clone Wars, as the person above me said, had crummy models in the trailers.

9 is a bit of a stumper because of its hype and awesome visuals, BUT it did have a decent per-theater average opening weekend and a theater count on the low end (under 2k). I’m going to guess that where the movie faltered was finding a large audience: there were probably some people ranging from, say, 10-25 (no really, I knew a lot of people hyping it), but it may have looked too scary for young children, who would have helped carry the movie more. I’d also venture to guess that a lot of boys 13 and older may have chosen to pirate the movie instead of going to the theater. Space Chimps looked downright stupid (just look at the title!), and it had too much competition in July. The Ant Bully also drowned in the summer competition and may have turned off people with its subject of ants, which is certainly nothing new to animation. I will say that this film is probably the most comparable on this list to films from mainstream animation studios.

Anything relating to VeggieTales is obviously catered to a specific audience, which are very very young children and their parents. Alpha and Omega didn’t look that great to begin with and the animation was meh. It looks like it’s a direct-to-video sort of thing. Astro Boy didn’t have enough of an existing fanbase, but it didn’t look bad judging by the trailers (I haven’t seen it yet).

I’m starting to get exhausted typing all this out now. Many of those are simply my own opinion, but I thought I’d give you an idea of what I think instead of just generalizing things. Like nintendofreakgcn, people can smell “utter tripe” from a mile away. Very few of these films were received well by critics; in fact, unless I accidentally skipped over one on your list–the only one with a RottenTomatoes score over 70% is Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, and few were over 50%. Oh dear, that’s not good. :laughing: I DO think that a heavy marketing campaign can help with the box office, however.

I think the question you’re really looking for is: why do CGI films from smaller studios stink so bad? :-D)

#7

Thank you for great replies! Agreed that the pre-existing franchise element is an anomaly. If Star Wars: The Clone Wars had employed the same story but without the SW background and characters, would it have been as popular? Doubt it. According to Box Office Mojo (don’t know of any better comprehensive source), TMNT made $95.6 million worldwide. The higher number might include DVD sales.

Agreed that moviegoers are good at avoiding tripe, but perhaps not every film on that list qualifies. It would be great to see analysis that shows how Monsters vs. Aliens is demonstrably of higher quality than Igor in proportion to their respective box-office hauls (about a 12:1 ratio worldwide). Personally, I enjoyed several films on that list more than Bee Movie. Sometimes it all comes down to personal taste, but as noted earlier, promotion can be key to general popularity. Box-office results and Rotten Tomato rankings are reasonable gauges of popularity/quality, but the “why?” is not always as clear.

Several years back, there seems to have been a push by smaller studios to generate CG features, largely due to economy of scale re: availability of requisite software. The trend could be about to end. It’s a reasonable guess that Gnomeo and Juliet will be the last CG feature for U.S. theatrical release produced by a small, independent studio. No doubt that would be welcome news for some! The lesson for smaller studios might be: don’t swim with the big fish, you’ll get eaten alive. Maybe something worthwhile is lost there, and maybe it’s something like original ideas not supported by mega-franchising.

One question might be not so much “why do CGI films from smaller studios stink so bad?” (good one, q_o_p!) but maybe whether cursory tools such as Facebook’s “Like” button have guided moviegoers toward the brightest, shiniest, most heavily promoted packages. Another question is whether the future landscape of CG features will look like a Rollerball-esque battleground of empires among Pixar, DreamWorks, Blue Sky, and maybe Sony Pictures or Illumination as “the little guy.” Cars 4 vs. Kung Fu Panda 7 vs. Ice Age 6 vs. Despicable Me 3, woo-hah!

Cheers! Steve

#8

Following up with more recent info…

Box Office Mojo has finally reported that LOTG: The Owls of Ga’Hoole exceeded $140 million in its worldwide haul, and that figure still doesn’t include Denmark and possibly India. Meanwhile, Gnomeo and Juliet has done better North American business in 2 weeks than LOTG did in its entire 17-week theatrical run. G&J is on track to be the first small, independent CG-animated feature to break through the $120-million-worldwide ceiling and maybe even the “major league” benchmark of $140 million.

So what?

First, it could be that Touchstone served G&J well by promoting it to an extent that other small, independent CG-animated films have not enjoyed courtesy of distributors like Lionsgate and Weinstein. This could indicate that perceived “quality” really does have a lot to do with promotion where CG-animated films are concerned. On the other hand, gnomes might just resonate more with audiences than, say, owls or wolves. Or, as noted earlier, maybe it’s just a function of sufficient story quality. But solid promotion doesn’t seem to hurt.

Second, it could be that the CG-indies are encouraged by G&J’s success to produce more films. On the other hand, the landscape for such films has been sufficiently bleak that G&J might prove to be the indies’ last hurrah. It’s significant that Starz, who produced the G&J animation, doesn’t seem to have any all-CG animated features in its pipeline (Starz’s long-delayed Hoodwinked Too! was completed earlier, and specifics about Eddy Deco and The Great Rabbitini are unclear). It’s hard to imagine HW2 duplicating Gnomeo’s performance with Rango and Rio in theatres, plus KFP2/Cars 2 coming soon thereafter. Also, the international scene for CG-indies looks less than encouraging. But time well tell.

#9

I think the main difference here is in the advertising. Legend of the Guardians was very poorly advertised. First, it seems to have hardly been advertised at all, which is never a good thing, and the campaign never seemed to have any real idea of who they were trying to appeal to. They probably should have gone for a two-pronged attack, with one half aimed at kids and parents, focusing on the light-hearted moments and the charming characters, while the other would be aimed more at the 20+ crowd, focusing on the utterly fantastic CGI and the fact that it was directed by Zak Snyder, the man for awesome slow-motion action.

Gnomeo and Juliet, on the other hand, was advertised in reasonable amounts, so most people were at least aware of it. There was also no need to focus on the idea of the film, because it’s right there in the title. Everyone knows the story of Romeo and Juliet, or at least thinks they do (I’m sure there are way too many people who don’t realise that it’s a tragedy, not that such notions seem to affect any animated adaptations very much), so they know what they’re going to get. People in general are very hesitant to take a punt on a film. I personally aim to do that at least once a year - it’s what got me to see How to Train Your Dragon, for instance. Many people, for whatever reason, aren’t willing, and thus go for what is comfortable. We can also see such ideas in the continued success of Pixar and Dreamworks, though that is just one factor.

For what it’s worth, nothing in the trailer for Gnomeo and Juliet gave me any desire to see it, either in cinemas or on DVD. The trailers for Legend of the Guardians are the only reason I saw it, because they wowed me with their visual majesty (okay, the fact that “Kings and Queens” is an awesome song probably helped as well). My views don’t seem to mesh with those of many film-goers, though, because everyone I showed the LotG trailer to hated it, while my mother has some bizarre desire to see Gnomeo and Juliet (for what it’s worth, my mother also loved LotG when I convinced her to see it on a free double pass I had). Sometimes all the logic in the world just can’t explain something.

#10

Great points, nintendofreakgcn! Agreed, the G&J concept is right there in the title. LOTG:TOOG’H is, on the other hand, quite a mouthful.

Locally, LOTG was well promoted with trailers and the big cardboard standees (and even large hanging banners, in at least one case) in theatre lobbies, with a single standee/banner dedicated to each owl character.

I plan to see LOTG, but it was a no-go in theatres because I have young children who were somewhat frightened by the trailer. That pattern could well have been duplicated among other families across the globe. On the other hand, the kids were quite entertained by G&J.

You’re probably right, ultimately there is no logic to explain why films fail or not. But it can be fun to try.

Meanwhile, the inner bean-counter notes that G&J is up to $75 million worldwide box-office after only two weeks in release. Not too shabby for the little guys!

#11

So in the final analysis, Gnomeo & Juliet is the only CG-animated film from a non-major studio to exceed $140 million in worldwide box office, at about $194 million total. Bravo for the little guys, especially if the production budget was a mere $36 million as reported in a few scattered places!

Interesting that Canadian outfit Starz, who animated Gnomeo, are now called Arc Productions and are partnering with everyone’s favorite love-to-hate-'em production company, Vanguard:

arcproductions.com/news/30

The Nut House, perhaps a harbinger of chaos? Ah, well, it will be worth a look if it gets released. But it would be no surprise if Gnomeo turned out to be the only minor-studio CG-animated feature that ever broke through to the big time. Happy Feet Two is a possible contender, but if the Dr. D Studios layoff story is true, sadly, another little guy might have bitten the dust:

reuters.com/article/2011/11/ … JW20111125