WALL-E Box Office!

Pixar's Feature Films WALL•E
#241

Thx for the correction. Anyways, Bond’s Q of S and Madagascar2 will provide the stiff competition in the box office. The last Bond film was regarded by many as their best ever, and Madagascar made $194M. I would agree the last Bond film ranked easily in the top handful, but the last Madagascar only rated a 6.5/10 in my book, worth the ticket, but not by much.

Not counting this weekend, Wall-E is at a domestic gross of over 222.5M as of Oct.30th. Foreign: it’s been pulling about $4M per week and just opened well in Italy. Now exceeding $1/4B overseas, it will almost certainly go over the 1/2 billion mark overall*. With dvd sales and merchandise, it will assure more funds for top quality future features, despite its $180M price tag.

For comparison, Ratatouille cost $150M and Nemo $94M. Rat had a huge overseas gross, particularly from France and Germany: this is a French word. So don’t think that Pixar was disappointed , they know that top-notch quality suffers in some quarters.

*So how well will Wall-E do in Japan? This is an interesting question, Nemo and Toy Story did spectacularly well and The Incredibles did quite well. But Rat was lukewarm and Cars did poorly. I’m not privy to the ad campaigns and release timing, but Japan isn’t a nation into big American cars, they laugh when they see yet another of our cars broken down along their roads. Now robots, thats a different matter. They love big cities, even big American cities. And they love spaceships and science fiction too. They will love Wall-E. And Eve looks sort of like she is wearing a kimono. Fat people - not sure here, few Japanese are fat. But they do like Pacific Islanders who come to Sumo wrestle. They worship what little agricultural land is available, and venerate their forests. They will love the plant.

I predict that they will go bonkers for this movie in December.

Edit on Nov30: Boxofficemojo is interestingly tracking the fairly rapid descent of QofS and Madagascar 2. Neither of these films, despite heavy promotion and media coverage on release is going to surpass Wall•E in the box office domestically! Oh sure, QofS did jaw droppingly overseas, but it’s just not that good and is facing stiff competition with Trans3. And Bolt is sopping up much of Mad2’s potential sales.

#242

Quick box office update:
Wall-E is now the 8th best overseas box office picture of the year, and we now have the official opening date for Japan: Dec 5th.

From Screen Daily, November 10th:

“Wall-E currently ranks as the eighth biggest overseas release of the year after adding $1.6m for $262m. It opens in Japan on December 5.”

screendaily.com/ScreenDailyA … hSite.aspx

DarkHandOfSigourneyWeaver: Yes, I think (and hope) they go bonkers for this movie in Japan…

#243

Thinking about Japan’s fondness for cute things, they should definitely fall in love with WALL•E. I think the reason why Cars didn’t do as well internationally is because of the whole American racing car circuit didn’t appeal to countries who weren’t as into that sort of thing, plus it was a slow movie… Ratatouille I can’t explain, in regards to Japan not liking it.

Thanks for that update, miafka! =)

#244

Good to know that WALL-E is still going strong, miafka. And I agree with DarkHandOfSigourneyWeaver that Japan will love WALL-E. Whenever I think of Japan, I tend to think of the most up-to-date technology and that sort of thing, so I’m sure cute little robots will really appeal to them.

#245

What’s the foreign box office total at? Is WALL-E at $500 million total yet?

I have to say I was hoping for a repeat of Ratatouille’s overseas performance. Or at least close enough that it could gross $600 million. Ah well.

#246

With the world economy in a bad slump all year, I would not expect WALL-E to break records at the box office. US total box office this year has fallen (a rare event), and I expect the same worldwide. That makes The Dark Knight’s US box office all the more amazing (though it has not done quite as well overseas).

I am also very interested in how WALL-E will do in Japan. The Japanese indeed adore robots and cuteness. However, robot romance, apocalyptic settings and transhumanist themes are all common fare in Japanese anime and manga. What strikes us as a bold and fantastic experiment will seem to them merely a skillful retreading of well-trodden ground. Animation there long broke out of the ghetto it is trapped in elsewhere.

There are also cultural differences. EVE’s behaviour does not fit the Japanese ideal of womanhood, nor WALL-E’s of manhood (though that might add to their charm). Conversely, the theme of dehumanisation from being shut in will resonate strongly, as will the idea of liberation through a return to nature. The Japanese are thankfully generally not averse to anti-consumerist or environmental themes.

However, the reaction of the Japanese audience is notoriously hard to predict, even for the Japanese themselves. They value consensus, which changes seldom, but also suddenly and violently. I have an intuition that it will be a smash hit there, but we can only wait and see. Remember, The Dark Knight completely bombed in Japan.

#247

The Dark Knight was preceded by almost unprecedented fanfare about Heath Ledger’s acting and superseded by a bevy of soft films, until Eagle Eye came out 2 months later. Everyone likes a winner and if you hadn’t seen it, why spend the ten bucks on a question mark?

But your comments about Japanese anime are rather sobering, kaikaun. I remember my favorite cartoons in late high school were Japanese, American animation was falling by the wayside then. Hopefully, our American brand of robot animation will delight them, altho the Iron Giant didn’t.

E.S.: The total world box office now stands at over $488M. Wall•E is still making about $200K per week in domestic theaters, somehow, even with the dvd out, and ranked last week as the #28 grossing film. I think this is due to college fall semester film series of ‘good’ movies that students missed earlier that year. Not sure. Anyways, it’s always a good idea to track these venues, as you can see here!! : flicks.stanford.edu/

[Edit: Wall-E only made $5.5M its first weekend in Japan, half what I was expecting. So much for understanding them. Further Edit: as of 12/14/08 up to $12.65M in Japan. And total combined take has now just gone over $500M]

Edit: $32.5M after the 4th week in Japan, now moving along well with heavy competition there.

#248

I think that WALL-E’s foreign gross is not quite good :frowning: I think it will end up worldwide about $588 million.

#249

WALL-E will easily make US$130M if in 85 days, maybe longer. The yen is getting stronger as we speak. The yen could hit 80yen to the US$. Nemo, the king of Pixar movies in Japan, made US$104M in 85 days at 107yen. This is my feeling right after watching WALL-E of course, but this movie was made for the Japanese audience from five years old and up. Go Pixar!

#250

This thread covered U.S. domestic and foreign box office for Wall-E. Pretty much the specific thread about Japan is covering any more action. No one has said anything about non-Japanese gross since Dec. 1st, it has almost stopped.

In fact, as of Jan. 8th, Wall-E is no longer in distribution in the U.S. Sad, but true. It had a run of 28 weeks, which is unusually long. I’ve mentioned that the film might be re-released if several major Academy nominations come forth on Jan 22nd, but hopes for that have dimmed with the awful facts that movies which come out early in the year are handicapped, animation is severely handicapped, and comedy is utterly unwelcome, as is science fiction. It would be Herculean at this point to win a nomination.

Edit. Last report showed global gross as over $521M. Wall-E made at least $44M in Japan, one site said as much as $47M there. The actual global total could be a bit more.

#251

According to moviefone it is still playing in 10 theaters (I know that’s pretty much the same as nothing in this case, but hey, who’s counting? :wink: ). I know of at least one person planning to see the film again very soon.

This does, however, ignore all of the barriers it has already broken, including the fairly major one of the LAFCA awarding Best Picture to an animated film for the first time in its history (and the LAFCA accurately picking a film that will at least get nominated in much of the past).