Animation

Days before Spin Master/Paramount/Nickelodeon’s PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie opens with a shot at No. 1 and $20M, a third theatrical movie has been announced for 2026. The long-running preschool franchise, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary, saw its first theatrical release under Paramount (and Elevation Pictures in Canada) open during the pandemic, day and
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It’s a Dora like you’ve never seen her before — in complete CGI animation. Nickelodeon is relaunching the famed Latina explorer in new animated theatrical short, Dora and the Fantastical Creatures, exclusively in theaters on Friday, Sept. 29 preceding the Spin Master Entertainment/Nickelodeon Movies/Paramount picture, PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie. The new CGI animated preschool
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After the massive weekend success of Sony Animation’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, many rival studios are looking at executing their comic book IP differently on the big screen. Quite often, animated superhero projects are released directly to the home (think Warner Bros-DC’s myriad superhero toon movies like 2010’s Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam and
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FRIDAY AFTERNOON: Illumination is looking at another record 3-day as the Universal/Nintendo co-production Super Mario Bros Movie is on its way to a $72M Friday-Sunday, the best second weekend for the animation studio. That’s a 51% ease at 4,371 theaters after a $20M second Friday, -64%. Running total by end of Sunday will be $332.8M.
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Deadline’s Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament took a hiatus during the pandemic as movie theaters closed for the majority of 2020-2021 and theatrical day-and-date titles on both the big screen and studios’ respective streaming platforms became more prevalent. Coming back from that brink, the studios have largely returned to their theatrical release models and the downstream
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EXCLUSIVE: Illumination/Universal/Nintendo’s The Super Mario Bros Movie just landed on tracking this morning ahead of its Easter weekend release, and the animated film is shaping up to make at least $85M-$90M+ over its Wednesday through Sunday launch — and that’s on the conservative side. Given the fervent response by fans to trailers, it would not
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Universal/Illumination’s Minions: The Rise of Gru has grabbed the best previews for an animated movie during the pandemic with $10.75M. That’s purely from showtimes that started yesterday at 2PM from 3,350 theaters. This, no doubt, bodes for another excellent weekend at the summer box office. That beats the $6.25M combined two day previews of Paramount’s Sonic
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UPDATED with TIFF exit: Clifford the Big Red Dog, Paramount’s CG/live-action movie that was unset from its planned September 17 release, will also not world premiere at next month’s Toronto Film Festival. It had been set as a Gala Presentation via the pic’s Canadian rightsholder eOne, which confirmed the news today that it was removing
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Paramount Pictures has curbed the planned September 17 release of Clifford the Big Red Dog, its CGI/live-action take on the beloved kidlit character. We hear that the studio is looking for a more family-friendly release date for the pic, which also had been announced as a Gala Presentation at the Toronto Film Festival in September. The title’s
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EXCLUSIVE: In a recent Samba TV measurement, 783K U.S. households tuned into Universal’s The Boss Baby: Family Business on the studio’s streaming service Peacock over the four-day July 4th holiday weekend. That number for the DreamWorks Animation title beats the four-day Memorial Day debut of Disney’s live-action pic Cruella on Disney+ Premier, which clocked 686K U.S. households that
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As the motion picture industry looks to get back on track at the box office, and avoid being the laughing stock of streamers, the latest question begged is: What was Sony thinking when they decided to move Hotel Transylvania: Transformania onto the Oct. 1-3 opening weekend of MGM’s Addams Family 2? Both Halloween-centric animated movies
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EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has licensed all global rights, sans China, to Sony Pictures Animation’s Vivo. The movie, directed by Oscar nominee Kirk DeMicco (The Croods) and co-directed by Brandon Jeffords (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2) with new songs written and performed by Tony award winning Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, was recently scheduled for a theatrical
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The next My Little Pony movie has just been picked up by Netflix in a global rights deal excluding China. Paramount was set to release the movie on Sept. 24. The pic is from eOne’s animation outfit Boulder Media,  directed andby Rob Cullen and Jose Ucha, with co-director Mark Fattibene. Cecil Kramer and Peter Lewis produced. A
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Refresh for latest…: DreamWorks Animation/Universal’s The Croods: A New Age led the weekend in China with a $19.2M debut, outpacing local titles One Second and Caught In Time. This is the third best bow for a studio movie in the Middle Kingdom during the pandemic era (behind Tenet and Mulan). In total, the Croods sequel
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Skydance and Paramount Pictures today announced that original animated musical fantasy Spellbound, which Paramount Pictures has committed to co-finance and release globally, is now slated for November 11, 2022. Skydance Animation’s first original feature film, Luck, will be released domestically on February 18, 2022 with a worldwide rollout to follow.  Today’s announcement marks the continued
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When it comes to evaluating the financial performance of top movies, it isn’t about what a film grosses at the box office. The true tale is told when production budgets, P&A, talent participations and other costs collide with box office grosses and ancillary revenues from VOD to DVD and TV. To get close to that mysterious end
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As more studios experiment with bringing high-quality pics into the home during the current COVID-19 home quarantine, Warner Bros is jumping into the mix by fast-tracking its animated pic Scoob! onto PVOD and premium digital ownership on May 15 in the U.S. and Canada. The Tony Cervone-directed feature animated take on the famed Hanna-Barbera cartoon TV
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In what is considered an anomaly in the industry for an on-demand rental title (not sellthrough): Dreamworks Animation/Universal’s Trolls World Tour is now available for pre-order on FandangoNOW in advance of the pic’s April 10 availability date. While pre-orders for sell-through titles like Bad Boys for Life are quite common, that’s not the case with VOD rental titles. In
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EXCLUSIVE: Klaus, Ford v Ferrari, and animated shorts Sister and Hair Love repped Oscar nominations earned by alumni of The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) yesterday. Since the creation of the Best Animated Feature Oscar category in 2001, 12 of the winning films were directed by CalArts alums with the last seven consecutive Animated
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After becoming Disney’s 6th film of the year to cross the $1B threshold worldwide when it hit the milestone in mid-December, Frozen 2 has now capitalized on holiday play to become the biggest animated movie of all time globally. With an estimated $1.325B, the Chris Buck/Jennifer Lee-helmed sequel has iced the previous record holder, Frozen
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Paramount is putting its Rugrats movie in timeout. The studio said today that it has pulled the Nick TV adaptation from its schedule after originally setting a January 29, 2021, release date. Taking over that weekend slot is Rumble, the toon from Paramount Animation and WWE Studios that is set in a world where monster wrestling is a global
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