(source: Box Office Mojo)
Paramount's Barnyard: The Original Party Animals may not be a hit, but it's starting to make a profit. The animated family film made $5,433,000 last weekend, bringing its 4-week total to $54,710,000. Barnyard cost $51 million to make.
That may be damning with faint praise, but such news puts Barnyard on the top of the mid-summer animation heap. Sony's Monster House has only made $69,327,000 in its 6-week run, still shy of its $75 million price tag. And that's positively rosy next to The Ant Bully's financial situation: the Warner Bros. animated film is a bona fide flop, barely making back half of its $50 million investment in its 5 weeks in theatres.
The lesson here, kids? If you're making an animated movie, don't release it within spitting distance of two other similar flicks. Everyone's gonna hurt.
Conversely, Disney/Pixar's Cars still keeps chugging along. Its 12-week total now comes to $240,548,000, doubling what it cost the studio in the first place. Not great for a film that many Disney executives hoped would crack the $300 million barrier, but still a respectable number.
Here are the animation front-runners for last weekend.
- 10) Barnyard: The Original Party Animals (Paramount): $5,433,000 ($54,710,000 after 4 weeks)
- 16) Monster House (Sony): $1,100,000 ($69,327,000 after 6 weeks)
- 21) Cars (BV): $727,000 ($240,548,000 after 12 weeks)
- 22) The Ant Bully (WB): $685,000 ($25,795,000 after 5 weeks)
