With “The Bad Guys 2”, Universal hoped for a little success in mid-Budget with families before children returned to school. But for producers DreamWorks Animation, this marks a key step in the business efforts to build new franchises from zero in a landscape of entertainment strewn with noisy and shiny alternatives.
“The Bad Guys” hit theaters in the spring of 2022 at a time when he was not yet clear to what extent the families were willing to return to the rooms after the COVVI-19 stop. Against a budget of $ 70 million, the film made a respectable $ 250 million worldwide and two years later, a suite was announced.
This suite, which arrives this weekend and should slightly correspond to the interior opening of its $ 24.9 million in its predecessor, is the first follow-up of an animated film published after the judgment. There have been followed by other films published in the past four years, namely horror titles like “Smile” and “M3gan”, but it is the first intended for families who have shown that if they spend more than $ 60 in four cinema tickets before concessions, it will be for a film about something.
“The public is definitely more fragmented, in particular with the quantity of options they have at home, and that changes how and when they discover new films,” said DreamWorks Animation, Margie Cohn, in Thewrap.
For DreamWorks, “Bad Guys 2” represents an opportunity to prove that it is still in the franchise construction sector. It was the studio, after all, who struck money with popular animated franchises such as “Shrek” and “How to Train Your Dragon”. But the original “How to Train Your Dragon”, which has just received a lively successful remake, was released 15 years ago; And “Shrek” has almost a quarter of a century now. Original animated films are much more difficult to break out now.
Cohn regularly refers to DreamWorks animated films as “Bad Guys” and the “Robot Wild” nominated with Oscars as original films. Technically, this is not the case, because they are based on the novels Ya d’Aaron Blabey and Peter Brown, respectively.
But in terms of marketing these films to the public, the “bad guys” and the “wild robot” are not exactly “The Hunger Games” Regarding raising awareness of the mass of source material, which means that they have faced the same challenges as the many real originals that Disney and Pixar have published in recent years, mainly for disappointing results.
“Elemental” by Pixar led to $ 496.4 million in 2023, but “Elio” bombed last month with $ 138 million while Disney’s Thanksgiving Bust “Strange World” ($ 73.6 million) and “Wish” (255 million dollars) combined for less than a third of 1.05 billion Dollars that “Moana 2” made from its version of November 2024 in November. Alongside films like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie “of illumination and” Minions: The Rise of Gru “,” Spider-Man: About the Spider-Ver “, and” Inside Out 2 “of Pixar, the message of the public is clear: they will buy cinema tickets for intellectual property and a known lower cost, but the originals are largely the field of stream, with its conclusion and its lower training.
The DreamWorks box office file reflects this. “The bad guys” and “The Wild Robot” did less at the box office, even before the adjustment of inflation, than the pre-countryic franchise launchers like “Shrek”, “How to train your dragon” and “The Boss Baby”. Admittedly, these two new films, unlike “Boss Baby” or “Dragon”, were produced on budgets below 100 million dollars, a trend that should continue as DreamWorks to increase their use of animation suppliers abroad in production.
Despite the challenges, Cohn says that DreamWorks does not back down and looks more like “Kung Fu Panda 4” – the studio’s most profitable post -shutdown version with $ 547.9 million – or the next “Shrek 5.”.
“We are committed to making an original film and a franchise film every year. We do not want to stop looking for new characters and new stories to tell,” she said, pointing to “Forgotten Island”, a real original adventure comedy that Dwa will publish in September 2026 before “Shrek 5.”
However, it takes an extremely strong word of mouth for animated films without IP hook to convince families to give them a theatrical chance rather than waiting for streaming. “The Wild Robot”, which was one of the best evaluated films of last year, opened its doors to a modest of 35.7 million dollars national last September, but made a leg to a multiple of 4.03x and a national final of 143.9 million dollars.
These legs, combined with the post-theatrical interest in sustained that “The Wild Robot” gained from its Oscar buzz, made DreamWorks in Greenlight a sequel. Conversely, “the bad guys”, although well received by criticism and the construction of its own dedicated fans base, are not entirely acclaimed. So how could the result do it?
The data from the Greenlight Analytics film monitoring company suggest that we will not see the major rupture numbers that “Moana 2” and “through the Spider-Verse” won after their predecessors have obtained years of streaming, except an important late increase after criticism. Although awareness of the public is consistent with the first “bad guys”, the intention to see the rest in the rooms remained flat among the moviegoers interviewed at 34%, similar to “Elio” before its opening of $ 20.8 million
In comparison, the first “bad guys” saw theatrical intention go from 26% to 45% in its broadcasting to publish, perhaps obtaining a boost like “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” of Paramount, families who made their first trip to theaters after a year stuck at home.
This is a factor for why the follow -up for “Bad Guys 2” remained in the fork of $ 20 million, but it is also tied with the opening of $ 28 million that the “Ninja Turtles mutant Holding: mutant Mayhem” won from a similar version niche in August 2023, going to $ 118 million.
“The Bad Guys 2” could be able to have a similar national race if word of mouth is strong, and if it corresponds to the performance abroad of its predecessor, it will be another modest success for DreamWorks against its $ 80 million budget.
But pre-liberation data do not suggest that two years of streaming play have acquired increased interest in seeing Mr. Wolf and his group of former thieves in theaters for their second round like “Moana”, “Inside Out” and “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” buzzed the buzz for their consequences. While these films in the 2010 years had the advantage of being popular streaming choices while families were stuck inside during the pandemic, “The Bad Guys” managed to put home at a time when the world opened.
Building new family franchises in the 2020s without a popular icon like Mario or Sonic is a challenge that DreamWorks, as well as the rest of Hollywood, always tries to understand. But they will soon have to find an answer, because the public will not be satisfied with the heritage and remakes of the 2000s and 2010s forever.
At the very least, theaters can count on DreamWorks to continue trying.
