Related Posts
Source: Box Office Mojo
Films aimed at family audiences tend to be among those that are most popular at the box office – or at least they have been for the past few decades – and it’s not hard to understand why. Few children are old enough to attend their local theater unsupervised, so more often than not, an outing to the movies will consist of at least one child and at least one adult per group. For comparison, a more adult-oriented film will draw audiences made up of either individual ticket-buyers or couples/very small groups of people, so because current societal standards enforce the idea of children being accompanied by a parent or guardian, family films end up selling more tickets than they would if they were only being given to younger audience members and not those who are older and possibly not as interested in the film.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to bring big changes to families’ movie-going habits, and not in ways that would be beneficial to theaters. Most parents have understandably been hesitant about taking them somewhere where they might be exposed to a contagious disease, so throughout much of 2020 and 2021, few family films were released in theaters, as many distributors feared that such films would bring in less than desired revenue due to how many families would opt to stay home rather than go out. Instead, most major studios turned to their streaming platforms as one of the primary means of distributing their most recent family films, often doing so to great success. Pixar, one of Disney’s primary animation divisions, released many of their most recent features – including “Luca” and “Turning Red” – exclusively to the company’s streaming service Disney+, all of which immediately became some of their most-watched content. Even Disney’s animated musical “Encanto”, which did get a theatrical release that accumulated $256 million in global ticket sales, exploded in popularity once it was made available to watch on Disney+. Given the circumstances, streaming seemed to be the preferred option for family film viewing, and throughout the past couple years, many of the major studios have acted accordingly.
However, recent months have shown that studios have been eager to make family films an exclusively theatrical experience, and have slowly adjusted the release patterns of their latest films in order to do this. Universal and Illumination’s “Sing 2”, released in December of last year, was among the first major efforts to return family films to a theaters-only release; even with rising COVID cases and heavy competition from box office juggernaut “Spider-Man: No Way Home”, “Sing 2” managed to develop some strong legs throughout the holiday season, earning $162.8 million at the domestic box office throughout its theatrical run, far more than any family film released throughout the pandemic had made up to that point.
In the months since the release of “Sing 2”, studios have released a few more family films exclusively to theaters, with most of them finding respectable success. Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 2”, the sequel to the popular video-game film adaptation released just before the start of the pandemic in 2020, performed even better at the box office than its predecessor upon its premiere in April, speeding past $72 million during its opening weekend and going on to make over $400 million worldwide. Just a few weeks after “Sonic” came Universal and DreamWorks’ “The Bad Guys”, which received a smaller opening weekend total of around $24 million, but proved to have just enough staying power to make it to a global sum of $244.5 million. Then there’s Disney and Pixar’s “Lightyear”, of which its performance has seen some rather mixed results. On the one hand, its $50.6 million opening weekend total was the highest of any animated film released since the start of the pandemic; on the other hand, studio analysts were predicting an opening weekend that was much higher, and with a budget of around $200 million, many are worried the film won’t break even.
It wasn’t until the Fourth of July weekend (appropriately enough) that a family film was met with success big enough to celebrate, that is to say success that would’ve been seen as big regardless of whether there was a pandemic or not. After being held back from release for over two years (as it was originally intended to come out in the summer of 2020), “Minions: The Rise of Gru”, the sequel to Universal and Illumination’s “Minions” (itself a spin-off of their highly lucrative “Despicable Me” franchise), finally made its debut on the big screen, and to say there was a demand to see the film would be a bit of an understatement. In the first three days of its release, from Friday July 1st to Sunday July 3rd, “Minions: The Rise of Gru” earned $108.5 milliion (making it the first family film to cross $100 million in its opening weekend since the pandemic started) and should make to around $128 million by the end of July 4th. These numbers allow the film to have the biggest Fourth of July debut of all time in North America (a title previously held by 2011’s “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” and its $115.9 million opening), and it’s so far the most encouraging sign that family films have made a comeback in theaters. How well “Minions: The Rise of Gru” does from this point is uncertain (especially with the release of Marvel’s “Thor: Love and Thunder” in the coming weekend, which will most certainly snag some of the Minions’ audience), but considering the film’s A rating on Cinemascore and a budget kept under $100 million, it’s safe to say the film is anything but a failure.
Will the rest of the year see similar success for future family films? It’s hard to say for sure, especially since the immense popularity of the “Despicable Me” brand was what catapulted its most recent film to such great box office heights, but studios are still optimistic nonetheless. Warner Brothers’ “DC League of Super Pets”, Disney’s “Strange World”, and Universal and DreamWorks’ “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” are among the biggest family films set to come out later this year. Even if they aren’t able to match what the Minions have achieved, hopefully they’ll do well enough to prove that families are ready to go out to the movies once again.
