The New York Times has an article claiming audiences are growing tired of CGI animated movies, especially those featuring animals (link via Kottke). The evidence appears to be the box office response to some recent releases like The Wild, The Ant Bully and Open Season.
Ironically, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is used as an example of failure as it only made $56 million at the US box office, but checking IMDB shows that:
studio executives have said that even with its reasonable budget of about $45 million) so comes in well below most CGI films (another part of the article states
some [animated movies] cost upward of $150 millionand,
Animated movies don’t have to be that expensive though, in an interview for the BBC, Cory Edwards, the director of Hoodwinked, explains how they made the film on a budget of $8 million, and which went on to gross over $50 million in the US alone.
Overall though, I agree with the theme of the piece and would say that film-makers need to be careful not to fall into the trap of making a cookie-cutter film which ticks all the boxes of cute characters for merchandising, an entertaining soundtrack they can sell and the potential for sequels and spin-offs to appear in the stores for Christmas. They still need to find a unique story that will engage the audience.
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