Coraline did do decent money, but lets not forget that it has the all-time 2nd highest gross for a stop motion film and had the benefit of being associated with Tim Burton (he had nothing to do with it, but I can't count the number of people I know who are under the impression he directed it). As well, the animation itself was vastly different than that of Fantastic Mr Fox. It was much more, for lack of a better word, CGish. Fantastic Mr Fox has a very distinctly stop motion animation style and I do believe it will negatively effect the films prospects, although I'd like to be wrong.Buscemi wrote:You do remember that Coraline did $75 million back in February? That was stop-motion animation.
Also, I can't see Planet 51 doing well at all. First of all, independently-made animation usually flops.
Second, here's a list of all of the sci-fi oriented animated features that have opened since the success of Pixar's Wall-E.
Space Chimps (independent)
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Lucasfilm)
Fly Me To The Moon (independent)
Monsters vs. Aliens (DreamWorks)
Battle For Terra (independent)
Astro Boy (independent)
Out of these films, only Monsters vs. Aliens did well at the box office. The rest either failed or failed miserably (especially in the case of Astro Boy, in which the animation studio went bankrupt during production and the film opened to just $7 million on a $60 million budget). In short, Planet 51 will be very lucky to meet the predictions that you guys are throwing out.
I think Planet 51 is a bit different than those other failures with the exception of possibly Astro Boy. It has more star talent, better promotion so far (I've seen quite a few billboards around the city) and what seems to be better animation. It may be independent, but it's different than the others in that it doesn't look independent. Space Chimps, Clone Wars and Battle for Terra all looked incredibly cheap and had dismal promotion. I don't expect it to do Monsters vs. Aliens numbers, but I do think it will surpass the rest of those sci-fi failures.
