Meet the Robinsons made around $25 million this weekend.
I guess that’s good for Disney, inasmuch as the studio’s feature animation department has produced 19 other non-Pixar cartoons over the past 20 years, and only five of them have had better opening weekends — said films being Chicken Little (2005; $40 million), Lilo & Stitch (2002; $35.3 million), Tarzan (1999; $34.2 million), Pocahontas (1995; $29.5 million) and The Lion King (1994; $40.9 million). We can bump that number up to six if we count the partly live-action Dinosaur (2000; $38.9 million).
But as far as CGI cartoons go, it’s still a smaller opening weekend than any of the 16 films produced by Pixar, Fox / Blue Sky, or Dreamworks / PDI have ever had, with the single solitary exception of Antz (1998; $17.2 million). On the other hand, it is easily bigger than the opening weekends for Flushed Away (2006; $18.8 million), which Aardman made for DreamWorks, and Everyone’s Hero (2006; $6.1 million), which IDT made for Fox.
If we toss all the computer-animated films distributed by Warner Brothers into the mix, Meet the Robinsons is also well behind Happy Feet (2006; $41.5 million), but well ahead of The Ant Bully (2006; $8.4 million) and slightly ahead of TMNT (2007; $24.3 million) and The Polar Express (2004; $23.3 million) — though I don’t expect it to have the latter film’s staying power.
It also did slightly better than the Sony films Open Season (2006; $23.6 million) and Monster House (2006; $22.2 million).
And it easily beat Paramount’s Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001; $13.8 million) and Barnyard: The Original Party Animals (2006; $15.8 million), as well as everything put out by the Weinsteins, whose champ to date is Hoodwinked! (2005; $12.4 million).
So … that’s the level Disney is operating on these days.
APR 2 UPDATE: Jim Hill gives his two bits on the box-office figures and what they might mean for the future of Disney animation.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In