>>78337085
Wait, what was original about Peabody and Sherman?

I haven't seen turbo but the rest of those movies were just "eh" they were sorta cute but nothing special. how to train your dragon 2 was a let down

>>78337157
Original ie non-sequels/spin-offs

>>78337085
Croods were great. The rest was pretty meh.

Dreamwork's best is still Megamind, tho.

>>78337085
>Of all of these, only The Croods was commercially successful.

Home made a shitload of cash.

YOU may not have liked it, but it was a financial success by a wide margin.

>>78337085
>None of them also reached 80% on RT
So?

>>78337158
>>78337301

HTTYD not the best? thats bullshit

>>78337879
>shitload of cash

Budget: $135 million
Box office: $386 million

This is Guardians-level and has no chance of get a sequel.

>>78337879

Home broke even at the box office. That's it.

Dreamwork's numbers cannot be read the same way as other companies such as Disney, because their margins are not the same as Disney's. Dreamworks must borrow a lot of money at higher interest, so their financing costs are hire. They don't have their own distribution, so that takes a chunk out of ticket sales. They lose out even more of the ticket price, half in some cases, in foreign markets.

Dreamworks can't hang with Disney, and they've been slashing costs and adjusting expectations and re-positioning themselves to be in the middle range of CGI family films. The problem is that in that space, they're facing studios that can put out movies at half the cost and still sell $1 billion in tickets.

>>78337085
People don't like Rise of the Guardians? I really enjoyed that movie

>>78338539
I did too! It's beautifully animated and I really love all the characters. It's got a bitchin' art book too.

>>78337085
Didn't they have Shrek, kung fu panda and stuff?

>>78338539

It was perceived as corny. Corny is a death knell for movies aimed at slightly older kids~young adults.

Personally, I describe the movie as "grim-grey."

>>78338539
It's a pretty decent movie. Though it's a kind of a shame that everyone tries to shoehorn Jack Frost into everything

Two words. Jeffrey Katzenberg. Guy hates Disney so much that his entire goal is to make movies that are nothing like Disney. And in that quest he ignores a lot of quality input from directors and the creative crew on his films and forces bad decisions on films that make them shitty.

KFP and HTTYD were two films that were generally left to their crews to run.

>>78338721
he's a lithe pretty boy, perfect for tumblr and fanart girls, it's not surprising.
>>78338674
Good villain, good heroes, with kids that aren't incredibly annoying and even little slapstick elves that didn't at all ruin the movie. There was a ton of darkness and despair, too. It was great. How could it have been considered corny?
>>78338579
I'll need to get my hands on that. Characters had a lot of depth and personality, I really hope it gets a sequel to delve into them a little deeper.

>>78338054
The second HTTYD was pretty shit.

>>78338883

I'm not going to argue with you on the merits of the movie. I'm talking about perception and marketability. It had Santa Claus duel-wielding scimitars. You don't think that's a marketing problem?

>>78339040
No, if i were a kid i would have thought that was sick

>>78339116

Well not enough of you did to prevent it from being a bomb and causing Dreamworks to close PDI and lay off half their marketing department.

>>78339349
I saw it three times in the theaters. I did my part, thanks.

I wish it'd had toys, Sandman alone would've been a ton of fun with his whips.

>>78337158
It was a disappointment.

>>78338054
First one? Oh yeah. Second one? Hell no.

You're asking the wrong question. Instead of asking why these films didn't make $400 million each at the box office, you should be asking why it is that an animated film has to take AT LEAST $400 million before entering into profit. Some part of the process is horribly bloated budget-wise.

Most of those films fall just sort of being really good. I think most of the time a better director could have turned them into great movies. I haven't seen Home though, since I'm uncomfortable watching movies with black leads.

>>78338895
no, thats why it won an annie and a golden globe and pissed so many people off when it didn't win an oscar

>>78340317
>I'm uncomfortable watching movies with black leads
Kek, what are you from the 50s? I'm all for hating darkies when they pull their ghetto bullshit and cause the decline of society, but how are you actually uncomfortable with them being in film, let alone just voicing a character?

>>78337879
>>78338438
>>78338102
It really depends more on back-catalog sales at that level of gross. Most studios don't see anything direct from the gross anyway, unless it's significantly more than double the production/promotion cost, but even then it does depend on the contracts everybody signed. Mostly studios make back-catalog sales money each year; it's around 60% of their income in most cases, and although the majority of DVD sales are probably done, that does continue to trickle in for years afterwards.

What they make most money on is the tv rights; those have a fixed number of uses or are controlled in other ways, so for popular movies that bear repeated viewings (always the case around this time of year as networks compete to have the widest selection of themed programming without repeats), and which get high audiences (which drive up the advertising revenue, which in turn drives up the asking price for the tv rights) there's still big chunks of money to be made. Less so with more niche movies like R-ratings or things aimed at smaller holidays throughout the year. The reason nobody much makes "summer" movies is because in summer - when those should be on tv - most people aren't watching, so they're unprofitable long-term.

I wouldn't say anything has no chance of a sequel; Superman IV is a warning from history, as is Superman Returns and Man of Steel. It really depends on how hard a given studio or rightsholder wants to push something.

>>78337202
If they make money, they're a commercial success. You can't arbitrarily say sequels don't count just to exclude Madagascar, Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon and this January's coming Kung Fu Panda.

The fact is they've made movies that have "failed" according to you since the studio began; the fact is, this hasn't bankrupted them because of those that work, they get one or more good sequels with strong box office. You cannot predict the hits, you have to make movies and find out if they become popular.

>>78338438
Distribution hits everybody's ticket sales. Just because Disney is a distributor doesn't mean they retain 100% of the gross; they give up 50% of it like everybody else, because that goes on staff costs, rent, etc etc. Movie chains cost money to run even if you ultimately own them.

>they're facing studios that can put out movies at half the cost

No, they aren't. Unless you think getting a higher loan APR means doubling their costs, which would mark you out as a retard.

>>78340268
>Some part of the process is horribly bloated budget-wise.

Not really. It costs what it costs to produce a movie that looks and sounds like a modern movie; even though these costs should fall as the technology improves, the costs stay the same because it means getting more into the movie instead of risking looking like a film made 5 years before. Things age quickly (which they also did in the 1920s through 40s, when similar advances in technology were being made) and if you get left behind your lower investment is a disadvantage.

Compared to the 1990s, costs haven't really risen; back then it was still possible to make an animated movie for what would now be equivalent to 120-140 million, but you might not think that if you only looked at initial offerings. Toy Story, for example, was made on a shoestring compared to modern budgets (though it was doing something new and likely benefited from people putting in longer hours unpaid, which you obviously cannot ask of everyone all the time), but the sequels enjoyed massive spending by comparison and it really does show even today.

>an animated film has to take AT LEAST $400 million

Because any movie has to spend 50% of its gross on distribution, so things that cost ~200million to make and market only break even around then. What counts is, again, the back-end sales. That decides which of them gets sequels.

Again, budgets are set by production cost, which is what it is, and you get what you pay for.

>>78340514

Again, this is not the position Dreamworks is in, because it is an independent studio and a major borrower. They have no reserves and pay a higher interest, and they can't wait for money to "trickle in". They don't own channels or networks. They have to break even on their pictures, which they are barely doing because for every hit, they have three failures.

The math just works out poorly for them. It has for a long time.

>>78340714

>Disney is a distributor doesn't mean they retain 100% of the gross; they give up 50% of it like everybody else

They're giving up that 50% to themselves. That's what matters to stock prices.

>Movie chains cost money to run even if you ultimately own them.

Who mentioned movie chains?

>No, they aren't. Unless you think getting a higher loan APR means doubling their costs, which would mark you out as a retard.

I'm talking about up front production budget. Dreamworks is in the $120~150 million range. Blue Sky and Illumination movies are about $70~80 million for comparable to much better ROI.

>>78340852
And yet they're still going. Suck it.

>>78340714

Actually, wait. Let's start over. Distribution fee is *not* the same as the cut to the theater. It's *on top* of that. It's 10% of the ticket price. But from Dreamwork's end, that's actually a 20% reduction in profit, and they still have to shell out for their own marketing on top of that. For every 4 tickets a Disney movie sells, Dreamworks has to sell 5 to keep up, and that's before figuring in all the other inefficiencies and costs they have as an independent studio.

>>78340714
Not necessarily. The despicable me movies, which while not fantastic on a visual level still look solid, have comparatively cheap budgets. Other studios need to studio illuminations techniques if they won't to slash costs.

>>78337085
>>Rise of the Guardians

It's a serious adventure movie starring mostly nonhumanized, unappealing owls. There is no world in which this would not have been a difficult sell.

>>Turbo

It is a movie about a snail, the world's slowest creature, who wants to move fast. The one-joke idea is the definition of "childish": no matter how many bells and whistles you try to add, there's just no way that basic plot—played seriously, not as a jokey 8-minute Looney Tune but as a 90-minute movie—isn't going to turn away almost anyone over grade school age.

Peabody and Sherman is out there almost as badly. It's a concept that worked before this because it was ridiculous and treated ridiculously; when it tries to take itself seriously, it's an uphill fight, and when it tries to add heartwarming family values, it handicaps itself even further.

>>78342802
>>>Rise of the Guardians
>It's a serious adventure movie starring mostly nonhumanized, unappealing owls. There is no world in which this would not have been a difficult sell.

Oops - the owl movie was really Legend of the Guardians (2010), a major Warner animated flop. Not Dreamworks.
That said, Dreamworks made a big, dumb mistake giving their (very different!) movie almost the same name as a turkey from three years before. It's like someone in 1989 wondering why they can't sell "Howard the Cluck."

>>78338652
That doesn't fit into OP's narrative. Shh...

>>78342902
Didn't prevent Guardians of The Galaxy from making millions, though.

>>78342802
>It is a movie about a snail, the world's slowest creature, who wants to move fast.
Ratatouille is about a Rat, who is known for eating literal garbage, wanting to be a chef
Execution is much more important than premise. Turbo's designs were dumb, its characters were unappealing and the plot was pretty scattered. It just plain wasn't as well designed as it could have been