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Finding Dory Makes 9.2M on Thursday, On Way to Record Breaking Opening Weekend

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Toothless

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Pixar’s Finding Dory found an insane $9.2 million last night, which is a record Thursday for an animated feature. That bests the $6.2m earned last July by the “starting at 6:00 pm” preview screenings for Minions. That Illumination/Universal/Comcast Corp. blockbuster ended up with $115.7m on its debut weekend. If Finding Dory merely follows the same path (and earned 5.37% of its opening weekend on Thursday), it gets to $173m, which is just a “bit” bigger than the $121m (in 2D) debut weekend of Shrek the Third back in 2007.

...

The Pixar sequel was indeed heavily anticipated, and the reviews are relatively strong, so either we’re looking an an incredibly frontloaded animated feature or we’re looking at another insanely huge Disney opening. This is 48% bigger than the previous record for an animated Thursday preview showing, and there is no real reason to presume that the film blew out its audience last night. This could be a monster debut, plain and simple.

...

A Maleficent multiplier which still gets the film to $153 million for the weekend. Obviously, if it ends up being “not frontloaded,” we’re looking at a sky-high debut. A 4% figure gets it to $230 million, which is insane and probably not going to happen. But a 5% figure takes it to $184m. So what we can presume is that it’s playing more like a conventional blockbuster release as opposed to an animated feature. But still, a number like $9.2m for an animated film is mind boggling.

...

Even a “really frontloaded for a toon” 8% gets the film to $116 million for the weekend (just above Minions‘s $115m debut), which I have to imagine is the worst case scenario at the moment. If it can get to $122m for the weekend, it’ll be the third-biggest animated debut even adjusted for inflation, behind Shrek 2 ($149m) and Shrek the Third ($151m).

There are even more statistics here. Looks like Shrek's nine year reign will finally be defeated by Pixar, which will receive the biggest animated film opening weekend for the first time since... Finding Nemo. It's like poetry. It rhymes.
 

Matt_

World's #1 One Direction Fan: Everyone else in the room can see it, everyone else but you~~~
This is insane
I expected it to be big, but such a trouncing of Toy Story 3 is crazy
 

NOLA_Gaffer

Banned
why did we all collectively watch Shrek and its sequels that much

Saw the first Shrek in theaters multiple times. Was absolutely addicted to that film.

Saw Shrek 2 exactly once and was disappointed at how awful it was. Didn't bother with the rest of the franchise to this day.
 

Sephzilla

Member
with any luck a few years from now people will gain this kind of self-awareness when it comes to marvel movies

giphy.gif
 

Eidan

Member
Lord Farquad is a better villain than anybody in the mcu.

people underestimate him because of his curly hair and his size but he is diabolical.
His only problem is how routine mocking of his appearance undercuts the central themes of the film.
 

cw_sasuke

If all DLC came tied to $13 figurines, I'd consider all DLC to be free
Finding Nemo was a straight up classic...all Teens who grew up watching this probably are now young Parent watching the movie with their Kids. Def. expect it from my Generation.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Looks phoned in, but I know I'll see it anyways.

That being said I'm more looking forward to Pets as are my kids.

In general I've preferred Disney An and DreamWorks over Pixar as of late.
 

Nerdkiller

Membeur
People enjoyed the pop culture references and sass. They were much sassier than their contemporaries.
It wasn't simply just that. Shrek came about at a time when Disney tended to get a lot of hate from some circles. Be it dislike towards Michael Eisner and his constant milking of franchises by releasing direct to video sequel fodder, to the near monopoly that the company had in the mainstream cinematic animation circle, either directly or influentially. Like it or not, whenever you thought of animated cinema at that time, the first thing in your mind that came to was Disney. So much so, that even Don Bluth, who's most celebrated works are as un-Disneylike as they come, effectively sold out in order to get his biggest mainstream success when he directed Anastasia.

So yeah, what you said, plus the general feeling towards Disney as a monolithic entity at the time made Shrek seem like a breath of fresh air at the time. Seeing stuff like Snow White and Pinocchio made fun of (which if you know your Hollywood, was definitely because of Jeffrey Katzenberg's firing from Disney) as well as a subversion of certain tropes that Disney has relied on heavily since the very beginning of its feature length animations made Shrek seem so endearing to us. Unfortunately, it seems to be a product of its time these days. Not just the pop culture references, but with the whole idea of it being the anti-Disney in the most edgy manner (a completely different kind of anti-Disney than Don Bluth's '80's work). These days, the animation monopoly is effectively broken. Most of the major movie studios these days have at least one animation studio in the fray. And most of that work has been pretty good, so far. Even Warner came back after a decade long absence in the form of The Lego Movie. Disney themselves have gotten over their post-Renaissance blues by putting Pixar mainstay John Lasseter in charge over their own in house animation group, which has paid off greatly for them, I feel. The future could not be any more bright for cinematic animation. So even though I don't think it's held up all that well, I think we can at least thank Shrek for breaking the mould.

Wait, what movie is this thread about again?
 
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