Welcome to the Cluck: 'Chicken Little,' 'Jarhead' Top Weekend
by Brandon Gray
November 6, 2005
The holiday season kicked off with a cluck and a grunt, an improvement over the thud of recent weeks but down seven percent from the comparable weekend last year when The Incredibles burst on the scene. As popular as they were, Chicken Little and Jarhead combined opened smaller than the Pixar picture's $70.5 million.
Disney's first fully computer-generated in-house production, Chicken Little, plucked an estimated $40.1 million from about 5,700 screens across 3,654 theaters. Though the opening was the second biggest in unadjusted grosses for a Disney-made animated feature, behind The Lion King, it was on the low end of major computer-animated features. The comedy about anthropomorphized farm animals running from an alien invasion sold a touch more tickets than Disney's traditionally-animated Lilo & Stitch, but fewer than the company's previous Pixar-free computer-animated effort, Dinosaur.
"We're thrilled to death with [the opening]," said Disney's senior vice president general sales manager, Chris LeRoy. "It's at the high end of what we possibly could have hoped for. We would have been pleased to be in the $30 million range." LeRoy added that Chicken Little marks the first Disney Digital 3D presentation at 79 theaters accounting for $2.1 million of its opening. LeRoy noted that Sony's Monster House will be the next release in the format, and Disney's next will be Meet the Robinsons for Christmas 2006.
According to Disney's exit polling, Chicken Little's audience was 52 percent female and 49 percent under 18 years old, and it skewed 79 percent family. That suggests the picture had significantly less non-family appeal than more successful computer-animated features like Shrek 2, The Incredibles, Madagascar and Shark Tale each of which played to about 60 percent families initially. Chicken Little's family ratio was closest to Robots, which was soft by genre standards with its $36 million start and $128.2 million final gross. Opening night pollster CinemaScore indicated that moviegoers gave the picture an "A-," a grade that's nothing to squawk about. As with all of their movies, the tight-lipped Disney would not disclose Chicken Little's production budget.
If Chicken Little under-performed, it's because it made similar mistakes as Robots it took place in a world without context, emphasizing goofy characters and pop culture references over its story, which was unclear from the marketing. The ads proclaimed Chicken Little to be a hero, but they didn't have him do anything heroic, showing off his dance moves instead with a long non sequitur in the trailer. Pixar has arguably been the most successful brand in movies because it emphasized story first and dazzled with its animation second.
<snipped, rest of article about other movies>
That last paragraph, IMHO, tells the entire Disney animation story these days (pun intended). BTW, we intend to see Chicken Little this coming weekend.
by Brandon Gray
November 6, 2005
The holiday season kicked off with a cluck and a grunt, an improvement over the thud of recent weeks but down seven percent from the comparable weekend last year when The Incredibles burst on the scene. As popular as they were, Chicken Little and Jarhead combined opened smaller than the Pixar picture's $70.5 million.
Disney's first fully computer-generated in-house production, Chicken Little, plucked an estimated $40.1 million from about 5,700 screens across 3,654 theaters. Though the opening was the second biggest in unadjusted grosses for a Disney-made animated feature, behind The Lion King, it was on the low end of major computer-animated features. The comedy about anthropomorphized farm animals running from an alien invasion sold a touch more tickets than Disney's traditionally-animated Lilo & Stitch, but fewer than the company's previous Pixar-free computer-animated effort, Dinosaur.
"We're thrilled to death with [the opening]," said Disney's senior vice president general sales manager, Chris LeRoy. "It's at the high end of what we possibly could have hoped for. We would have been pleased to be in the $30 million range." LeRoy added that Chicken Little marks the first Disney Digital 3D presentation at 79 theaters accounting for $2.1 million of its opening. LeRoy noted that Sony's Monster House will be the next release in the format, and Disney's next will be Meet the Robinsons for Christmas 2006.
According to Disney's exit polling, Chicken Little's audience was 52 percent female and 49 percent under 18 years old, and it skewed 79 percent family. That suggests the picture had significantly less non-family appeal than more successful computer-animated features like Shrek 2, The Incredibles, Madagascar and Shark Tale each of which played to about 60 percent families initially. Chicken Little's family ratio was closest to Robots, which was soft by genre standards with its $36 million start and $128.2 million final gross. Opening night pollster CinemaScore indicated that moviegoers gave the picture an "A-," a grade that's nothing to squawk about. As with all of their movies, the tight-lipped Disney would not disclose Chicken Little's production budget.
If Chicken Little under-performed, it's because it made similar mistakes as Robots it took place in a world without context, emphasizing goofy characters and pop culture references over its story, which was unclear from the marketing. The ads proclaimed Chicken Little to be a hero, but they didn't have him do anything heroic, showing off his dance moves instead with a long non sequitur in the trailer. Pixar has arguably been the most successful brand in movies because it emphasized story first and dazzled with its animation second.
<snipped, rest of article about other movies>
That last paragraph, IMHO, tells the entire Disney animation story these days (pun intended). BTW, we intend to see Chicken Little this coming weekend.
