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Jason Sudeikis' new animated film breaks dismal box office record on opening weekend

A new one animated film with the voice of Ted Lasso Star Jason Sudeikis broke a major 2024 box office record with its dismal opening weekend. This year saw some big animated hits hit cinemas, including the sequels Kung Fu Panda 4 ($549.1 million worldwide) and Despicable Me 4 ($965.2 million). Furthermore, the Pixar film Inside Out 2 It grossed $1.696 billion, making it not only the most successful film of the year so far, but also the highest-grossing animated film of all time.




However, the 2024 animated films largely continued a recent trend that debuts with low to mediocre opening weekends and then evolves into sleeper hits. This includes The wild robotwhich has generated Oscar buzz as its release, which opened with $35.7 million, slowly climbed past $200 million worldwide and counting. Similar, The Garfield movie It only opened to $24 million but earned a worldwide gross of $257.2 million. Still, given its disappointing debut, the new Sudeikis film doesn't seem destined to reach even that level.


Hitpig! Broke a dismal box office record

Opening weekend is dangerously low


Hitpig! broke a major box office record with its dismal opening weekend. The film was co-written by Berkeley Breathed and inspired by his 2008 children's book Pete & PicklesIn the lead role, Sudeikis plays a bounty hunter pig who goes on an adventure in Las Vegas with the elephant Pickles (Lilly Singh). The voice cast also includes Rainn Wilson, Anitta, RuPaul, Hannah Gadsby and Charlie Adler. Hitpig! The reviews were mediocre and it made it a narrow freshness rating of 61% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Per deadlineAs of Saturday morning, Hitpig! The film is expected to gross a total of $945,000 at the domestic box office over its three-day opening weekend. diversityThe report disagrees, showing that the film grossed just over $1 million in its debut in 2,000 theaters. However, any total reflects that the film will generate revenue the lowest-grossing domestic opening weekend of the year for any major animated film released in major theaters. Below is a breakdown of how the film compares to other 2024 nationally released animated titles that grossed less than $10 million from more than 1,500 theaters:


title

theater

Opening weekend

Hitpig!

~2,000

~$1 million

My Hero Academia: You are next

1,845

3 million dollars

piece by piece

1,865

$3.8 million

Spy x Family Code: White

2,009

$4.8 million

The film also has compares poorly to most 2024 animated re-releasesalthough new releases are notoriously inconsistent at the box office and usually play in fewer theaters. Hitpig! was far surpassed by LAIKA's debut Coraline ($9.8 million in 1,535 theaters) and won't even be able to keep up The nightmare before Christmas ($2.4 million in 1,700 theaters) or Shrek 2 ($1.4 million in 1,512 theaters), although it pulled through To redden ($578,000 in 1,560 theaters) and roughly matched the 1994 figure The Lion King ($1.055 million in 1,330 theaters).


Our interpretation of the Hitpig! Opening weekend

The film's woes may not be over yet

Although it is possible that the box office for Hitpig! could grow as the release continues throughout November, that prospect seems unlikely. It seems that it has suffered from the lack of major publicity and the audience reaction so far shows that It probably won't be a word-of-mouth success. Per deadlinePostTrak shows that only 46% of viewers surveyed expressed a positive reaction to the film, which could spell doom for the already stalled project.

Source: Deadline & Variety


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