Meet the Robinsons struggling?

(Source: www.jimhillmedia.com)

Meet the Robinsons appears to have won the first round of the Animated Wars of March. It opened with $25.1 million, slightly better than Warner Bros. rival TMNT which earned $24.3 million in its first weekend in theatres. However, it's a pyrrhic victory for the Mouse House.

Disney's previous CGI offering, Chicken Little, was considered such a disappointment that many pointed to the failure of that film as the reason why Robert Iger paid such a hefty sum for Pixar back in April of 2006. It's worth noting that Chicken Little made $40 million in its first weekend, nearly double Meet the Robinsons' take. Does that mean that Meet the Robinsons is a bigger bomb than Chicken Little?

For now, Disney executives are adopting a wait-and-see attitude. Meet the Robinsons may have had a lacklustre opening, but many reviewers were pleasantly surprised by the flick and it earned an impressive 65% Fresh rating on Rottentomatoes.com. Mouse House honchos hope that kids and parents, on holiday over the Easter Weekend, will notice that and drop Meet the Robinsons into their plans. Disney executives are also hoping that all those positive reviews will help give the flick some "legs" so that it'll eventually make over $200 million in theatres (the current benchmark for a blockbuster).

The news that TMNT suffered a 62% audience drop-off during its second weekend in theatres can't be good for those plans. In all fairness, reviewers weren't nearly as kind to TMNT as they were to Meet the Robinsons.

So why did Meet the Robinsons do so badly? Some observers point to the fact that the trailers for Meet the Robinsons didn't do the flick justice. The trailers, especially the second one, emphasized the comedy elements (the talking T-Rex and the caffeine patch) at the expense of the affecting drama at the heart of the story.

Because of those trailers, many viewers might have said, "Been there, done that" to the film, thinking it was another exercise in soulless CGI trickery. More astute animation observers may have known about the story behind this flick, as detailed by WFDA chief creative officer John Lasseter at a recent investors' meeting. Here are the highlights of what Lasseter had to say about the flick.

"Steve Anderson was directing Meet the Robinsons," Lasseter said. "And he talked about this story, which is about a boy who is given up for adoption and he always wondered why . . . did his mom give him up?

"And, as he told this story, Steve mentioned, 'I'm adopted.' And his personal story touched me so deeply that when I finally saw the film, which . . . didn't have in it what Steve's personal story had."

Lasseter continues by saying, "His personal story brought me to tears, right, and I thought, 'ah, this feels like it's had too many cooks trying to stir this soup.' So we gave him a lot of notes . . . I said, 'Steve, make the movie you want to make. Tell your story.'

"And he came back with . . . this story about Lewis . . . who is focusing on the past . . . And he wants to focus on his past, but this focus actually takes him to the future, where he meets this amazing, crazy, wonderful, appealing group of characters that actually turns out to be his future family. And he learns through this experience to look forward in life, not to look back. And this story, it's Steve's story."

Not exactly the movie the trailers were promising, was it?

So what happens now? There are two scenarios: the first is that movie-goers read the positive reviews and give the flick another shot. Meet the Robinsons becomes a sleeper hit, and everyone's happy. Disney might even go so far as to request a second round of trailers that are closer to what the film actually is (something like what Pixar did for Ratatouille's latest trailer).

The second scenario is much less happy: the trends continue and Meet the Robinsons tanks in theatres. This may not actually be a bad thing, especially if you're a fan of Disney's traditional cel animation.

According to an anonymous Walt Disney Feature Animation insider who talked with Jim Hill Media, this means that WFDA may ditch CGI and stay with what's it's best known for:

"By the end of this summer, when people in the industry are looking at what Ratatouille and Shrek the Third earned, that $100 million that Meet the Robinsons had to struggle through the entire month of April in order to earn is going to look pretty paltry," the WFDA insider claims.

"After that, all eyes are going to then be on Enchanted . . . If that Kevin Lima film turns out to be a genuine blockbuster . . . Well, the pressure's really on then for American Dog. And God forbid if (it) makes less at the box office than Meet the Robinsons eventually does . . . If that were to happen, there are people here at this studio that would view that box office slump as a sign that moviegoers . . . (would) prefer it if Disney left the computer animation to Pixar.

"Which would then put an awful lot of pressure on The Frog Princess. To see if (it) actually delivers on the promise of Enchanted. Giving people not just 10 or 15 minutes of a traditionally animated fairy tale. But a full-blown feature-length traditionally animated feature along the lines of The Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast and Aladdin. If Frog Princess is a smash . . . Well, that would then be pretty much all she wrote for CGI at WDFA."

How likely are these scenarios? Will Meet the Robinsons make some decent coin? Or is this the beginning of the end of CGI at Walt Disney Feature Animation?

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