I feel great relief that I get to write the above headline. Dreamworks’ The Wild Robot was praised by those who got to see it in early previews, described as the greatest animated film the studio has made to date. But if merely being good was enough to guarantee success, the prequel-age Transformers wouldn’t be drowning their sorrows in whatever Autobots drink at the Cybertron Pub right now.
There was a lot riding on this. If The Wild Robot flopped, it would just entrench the belief further in suits’ brains that Recognizable IP is the only way to go, and any original projects in the pipe would be cancelled to make space for five more Boss Baby movies. It would also create the weird assumption that audiences won’t pay for animated movies about robots (besides the aforementioned Transformers One, The Iron Giant was far from an instant success).
But no, we WILL pay for animated movies about robots, and not only that, we’ll pick one we haven’t seen before over one we have (imagine that). The Wild Robot was predicted to take in $20 million on opening weekend, but it blew past that, landing at $35 million to finish in first place.
$20 mil would have still been enough to beat Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which hung on to second place with $16 million. The ‘Formers came in third with $9.3 million. Actually this was the kind of weekend where you could earn less than a million dollars and still make it into the Top Ten (by all rights Coppola’s Megalopolis is a bomb, but its $4 million earned it a sixth place finish).
The Wild Robot stars Lupita Nyong’o (Us, Black Panther) as Roz the title character, Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us, The Mandalorian) as Fink the fox, Catherine O’Hara (Schitt’s Creek, Best in Show) as Pinktail the possum, Bill Nighy (Living, Love Actually) as Longneck the goose, Kit Connor (Heartstopper, Rocketman) as Brightbill the gosling and Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All at Once) as Vontra. It’s playing now in theaters and, who knows, might even beat Joker 2 next weekend (…maybe).
