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The holiday film appears to be a bigger disappointment than Lazard Capital Markets’ Barton Crockett imagined just a few weeks ago. He says today that he expects the studio to take a $96M write-down — more than double the $45M he predicted in mid-December, and close to the $109M that DreamWorks Animation took in 2006 for Flushed Away. Crockett now forecasts that the company will report a 44 cents-per-share loss for Q4, down from his previous prediction of a 6 cent loss. Crockett says that Rise Of The Guardians likely will end up generating $110M at domestic box offices and $210M overseas vs. his previous forecast for $130M and $276M, respectively. “While bulls will want to look past this write-off, the risk is that a second flop like Guardians could dramatically change sentiment,” he says. DreamWorks Animation shares are down about 2% in mid-afternoon trading, and more than 26% since early November.
How Much Will DreamWorks Animation Write Off For ‘Rise Of The Guardians’?
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What a shocker…LOL.
Hey Guys,
Don’t ever give up! I absolutely love Rise of the Guardians and think the message it delivers is so powerful….remember it’s about “HOPE”. I believe in the Guardians and have and will always pass that hopes and dreams along to my children. Without dreams how can we live????
This is really too bad. And I was hoping for a sequel. Why did they choose to release the movie on a date that was already clogged with Twilight and James Bond, anyway? I feel like that’s one of the main factors that made the movie fumble the way it did.
What’re you TALKING about?!
The film had NO comparable competition — as you proved by using Skyfall & Twilight as reasons it didn’t do well. Those aren’t family films. Families will come out for the right movies.
The concept of this was trite — like something an 8-y-o would doodle in class — the character designs are horrible (a CGI animator friend referred to them as “vile and off-putting”), and the voice work, based on what I’ve seen, is lackluster (including Baldwin’s odd choice to be a Russian Santa [Baldwin's voice work btw, was the only highlight in the otherwise mediocre Madagascar 2]). The fact that it did as well as it did is b/c Wreck-It Ralph ran out of steam by the time Guardians was released, and I don’t believe there were any other children’s flicks for several weeks — certainly no animated ones (unless you include the 3D release of Monsters, Inc. around Xmas).
I wouldn’t call the second Madagascar film “mediocre” as much as it was chilling and disturbing. Did they really bring the old lady back from the original? Did they really make her the primary antagonist? Did they really animate a fight between her and the lion, in which the lion doesn’t hold back and hits her? I was half-expecting Herzog’s name to come up as a writer or something: how else do you explain that film, which was meant to be a kid’s film or something?
You are so ignorant. It was a bad week to release movies, because families did go and see Twilight and Skyfall. It still had competition from Wreck It Ralph, and had poor advertising.
As for the film itself? A pure classic. In my opinion the best animated film of the year and one that I will watch over and over again. Which you wouldn’t know, because you’ve never seen it. Take time to watch a movie before prophesying why it’s such a failure.
The movie IS a failure. That’s what this entire article is about. You really don’t need to see the movie to know it’s a failure when it doesn’t do well at the box office. . Just because you disagree with someone, surely doesn’t make them ignorant.
A movie doesn’t have to make a lot of money to be good. You guys criticize the movie for things you have no idea about because you HAVN’T seen it. Thus making you ignorant.
Let’s just call it a box office failure and be done.
“A movie doesn’t have to make a lot of money to be good.”
No, but it DOES have to be GOOD. And this kiddie cartoon is bad.
I don’t think it was a failure at all. Look at the fans that ROTG has! It flooded DeviantArt and tumblr in just a few days!
I also watched and judged ROTG and Twilight myself without the help of box office and I thought ROTG was WAAAAAYYYYYYY better than Twilight. Actually, I wanted 2 hours of my life back from that Twilight movie… no, wait. Let me rephrase that… I WANT ALL THE HOURS I WASTED WATCHING THAT WHOLE SERIES. (FYI my aunt made me watch all of them with her, so I had to endure watching the freakiest romance movie in my life) Can’t say anything for Skyfall since I didn’t hear about it at all so I didn’t know it existed until after the movie was out of theatre. I really like the light and heartwarming feel from ROTG. It helped brought back the good childhood memories when I didn’t know the world was so screwed up.
Just because it didn’t do well in the box office doesn’t mean it’s a failure. I already saw the movies prefer Rise over Twilight and Life of Pi.
@Firescope: With all due respect, I would recommend learning the basics of box office before posting on this board. A casual viewer with no understanding or interest in BO would understand Skyfall and Twilight were not competition for ROTG. The only competition this movie faced was Wreck-it Ralph, which was in its fourth week.
Thanksgiving is a “terrble time to release movies”? You’ve got to be trolling.
It really doesn’t matter if Rise of the Guardians is the worst film ever made: A children’s animation piece about the classical holiday icons teaming up should be a can’t-miss box office slam-dunk. We’re not talking about Todd Solondz, here; we’re talking about what, in theory, should have been one of the easiest sells of all-time.
Instead, it struggled to overcome the movie about a boy sitting on a rowboat with a tiger. It actually failed to defeat that movie in the global market. That’s pretty pathetic.
@Dack Rouleau
Actually I’m surprised by how much people were against this movie on principle, even before reviews and such.
I can kinda understand people saying they don’t like how the movie looks “which I couldn’t believe seeing as how if nothing else, this is probably the most beautifully animated film in 2012″, but people didn’t like the holiday icons being superheroes concept in general.
Santa Claus is Russian? The Easter Bunny is Austrailian? Pass.
I might understand if people don’t celebrate these holidays, but I couldn’t believe how many people can’t handle a new spin on a character…
Since we’re talking about opinions, here’s mine. If the movie was such a failure, then why are there so many fans? I don’t care how the Box Office works and I watched the movie myself. ROTG was great. Twilight was just “ugh!” Watched it and judged it. Twilight can’t compare to ROTG.
I tend to see this performance as a strange bump in an otherwise smooth and bright road.
I don’t understand why Rise of the Guardians is considered such a flop when it has already grossed more than $255mil worldwide for a $145mil budget. Meanwhile, Wreck-It-Ralph has grossed $275mil ww for a $165mil budget. Why don’t we hear about it too? why the double standard?
Please add LIFE OF PI to this discussion as well, which it also heading to be a big money loser for all involved.
Life of pi has earned $ 306 millions on production budget of $ 120 million..should easily end north of $ 400 million..not a disappointment by any chance..profitable venture
Disney is able to easily absorb any type of write down from one film since their film studio is one of the smallest revenue generating parts of the company. On the other hand, Dreamworks Animation is incredibly dependent on delivering a hit film each time to meet their expected earnings.
That’s my point exactly! Now keep in mind, I have no idea of marketing costs overseas, but the film has almost doubled its production costs (on the strength of foreign ticket sales). It reminds me of “Tron: Legacy” somewhat, though an important difference is that ’T:L’ actually surpassed its production costs domestically–barely–coupled with strong performance overseas.
I am of the opinion that “Rise Of The Guardians,” if it manages to stay in domestic theaters for two or three more months, it will come closer to meeting its production costs, and coupled with its strong overseas performance, will probably have a sequel (though perhaps with a smaller budget (If it could have been held to $100 million, as opposed to $145 million, it would be on the verge to making back it’s production costs domestically).
A film with it’s P&A costing a combined $300 million, must make back 3 times the amount, in this case $900 million to break even. Now can you see why it’s considered a flop?
Well, Brian, I just perused the list of movie theaters in my area (all 8 of them) and couldn’t find Rise anywhere. So your hopes appear to have been dashed.
A WDAS movie getting better reviews than a Pixar one is still an accomplishment.
Maybe they should just stop doing animated films with Hugh Jackman (star of Flushed Away). Seems like he’s their bad luck guy.
No one wanted to see a threatening easter bunny. Word of mouth on the film was awful. Parents advised friends and social media “friends” not to take their kids. It was a misfire from conception… but still they made it. Well, whoopsie… the studio will lose money on it. Not a surprise.
See I don’t understand that. I didn’t think he was threatening at all. He was actually very sweet and tender to the children when he was around them.
I rather enjoyed this movie, as did my best friend. We saw it over Thanksgiving weekend along with Skyfall.
I disagree on your “bad word of mouth” thing but that’s only from my personal experience. I’m a college student with a slew of college student friends, some with high school age siblings, and every one of those people thought it was either generally good or wonderful. Three of us had parents who saw it and liked it. My mother’s friend, a woman with three boys 7, 10 and 13, all loved it and they are the ones closest to your example. I have no doubt she would recommend it to anyone who asked her.
So I have little evidence actually pertaining to what you say but…I had no idea it had bad word of mouth, anyway. The movie’s take on these icons/characters was new and interesting. Why is not adhering perfectly to the mainstream Santa/Easter Bunny a terrible idea anyway? I thought movies generally got praise for “creativity points”.
The idea itself that parents are out there saying “That movie’s Santa is ridiculous/offensive, don’t let your kid see it” comes off as stupid to me.
Maybe they should have exploited the fact that they now also own the RB holiday specials.
I didn’t want to take my kids to see a tattooed Santa. That was just wrong.
Because the Santa has tattoos so the movie is wrong? Wow, talk about over-sheltered and narrow-minded parent.
Santa has a tattoo so it’s bad? Seriously, there’s much worse stuff your kids can see, but tattoos?
Unfortunately Turbo and Sherman & Peabody look like a dogs too. I see DWA between $12- $14 by year end.
Turbo’s trailer isn’t doing much to alleviate my fears. The trailer sucks.
Turbo looks slight and small.
Sherman and Peabody seems Meet the Robinsonsish–quirky and earnest.
Croods, however, looks like it could be fun.
Turbo has one of the most overblown voice casts I’ve ever seen. And they’re already planning a TV series!
It’s no wonder it flopped. Weak story, disjointed storytelling, and it was ugly. Next up, the dw flop The Croods. It’s even worse–and even uglier.
To me, The Croods isn’t ugly enough, with the neanderthals sounding exactly like Nicolas Cage and Emma Stone.
It was an awful idea to go up against Twilight and Skyfall in the first place.
They split take 50/50 w/ the door and an off the top dist fee of 8-12%…so even if it “cost” 100 mil, it has to earn about 210 to break even…and that’s w/o adverts. That’s a very basic run down of a very complex fee structure.
Can somebody explain where the $96 loss comes from? I kinda get production costs don’t cover advertising or theater costs, and how theater costs get worse the longer it’s out in theaters, but still not sure how there’s still a $100 million.
Anyways, I recognize the flaws and kinda get why a holiday movie that has Christmas/Easter might not do great, but I still can’t believe it did as bad financially as it did. Such a shame.
Certainly, Gizmo.
Crockett expects the film to gross $320 million worldwide. Of that number, the studio would be lucky to collect half, or $160m. Based on that generous figure, we must then account for a $110m global marketing campaign, which is about what I would have expected for this film.
Of course, I don’t pretend to know how much of that is split with the toy manufacturers and such businessmen. DreamWorks may be less in the red by the time all is said and done, but not by enough for anyone to consider the film a success.
When my children saw the trailer for Rise, they both said, in unison, “That looks terrible”. Had to agree. The CGI looks sophomoric, at best. What’s happening at Dreamworks Animation?
Sophomoric at best?
You must know some pretty freaking talented however-old-they-are’s, because the amount of detail gone into that animation is stunning.
Even the fur on the props looks realistic, the hair animations and the way water drips down Jacks face, the detail in expression and even on the feathers of Tooth.
Unless of course, you haven’t actually seen the film itself.
Your kids have some pretty high standards, either that, or they lack imagination.
“realistic” doesn’t mean GOOD. Strong characters and storytelling are all the audience cares about, and the film doesn’t have much of that. And yes, even the CGI is amateurish. It’s as if they just discovered “fluid dynamics,” and overused it in bland and uninteresting ways. Just awful looking. Bad lighting, too.
Then let’s see you make an animation movie and make it a big hit since you know so well what makes a good story.
The movie’s ad campaign seemed like a backwards version How to Train Your Dragon‘s, going from earnest and majestic to irrelevant and light.
This movie is all about believing in the things we believed when we were children. Unfortunately the world has turned to be not worthy of a place to LIVE in. Those people who say this movie sucks without watching it, you just need attention that’s all. Those people who say this movie sucks even though they watched it, they are the people who just exist and never LIVE. Basically this is a very inspirational movie because the main character here only exists but he doesn’t live. But when someone believed in him he started to LIVE. There is a huge difference between Existing and Living. The Graphics are good, the Characters are cool and the story line may have many plot holes but come one! It did have a good story! I don’t know why people put hate on this movie. What is your problem? It’s a nominee of the golden globe award nominee as the beast animated feature and can’t this prove enough now? Watching this movie is a wonder. I am very grateful Dreamworks Animation cooperated with Paramount to produce this very brilliant film. This movie does not deserve hate guys. If you hate this movie then let me watch one perfect movie and I will bow down to you, if there is.
I rarely watch animated films…most of the time I walk out on them. Somebody who says this movie wasn’t good enough must be looking too much on it from a technical point of view. Children don’t see the technical side! It was the story that captivated me here. Most animated films wow an audience too much on the effects — this one was not poor on that It was an excellent story. And if you don’t believe in things like that, it’s just too sad that all you see is the money as a measure of a film’s success. I agree with you Gerard! 100%
I don’t understand why they are doing this. I don’t understand why this film turned out to be a “flop”. This movie was so captivating, it really spoke to my heart, made me feel like I’m not entirely alone; I really connected with Jack Frost. Sure, there are some things that could have been better, like how they delt with Pitch and giving more character to Tooth, but the beautiful animation and soundtrack to this movie are indescribable. This movie is what completely set my decision to be an animator/filmmaker.
PLEASE ROTG fans, PLEASE support this movie by watching it in theatres. PLEASE. If HTTYD can get a sequel, so can ROTG.
the film will most likely hit 400 world wide as the movie has bounced back, dreamworks has expressed huge interest in turning guardians into a franchise and since it is popular out of the states than they shall turn it into one especiialy since kungfu panda is ending, shrek is done, and madagascar is crap, i think dreamworks is willing to take the risk as they expected this slow rise at the box office and they want to see this film finish strong which it will, and if you look online this film has a huge huge cult following something rare for an animtated flick so odds are this movie will get a sequel
You sir, seriously need to link me the place where you read or heard that DreamWorks “expressed huge interest in turning Guardians into a franchise since it is popular out of the states.” I ask this as a fan of the movie who would jump for joy at hearing such news. But I still am dubious about the truth of your statement because Guardians is struggling to make good money and has been since day one, obviously.
It IS true that Guardians has made more money overseas than here in America, and I find that really surprising what with all the countries out there that don’t share out childhood icon mythos. Would that really be enough to propel Guardians into getting its own TV show or something else?
And I chuckle with agreement at how you say it’s got a huge online cult following ’cause heck yes, it does, it’s eating DeviantART and Tumblr alive, haha.
Next up is director Kirk De Micco’s flop “The Croods,” which is testing poorly, and response to the trailer has been tepid at best.
It’s sad that ROTG isn’t doing well. But as a child at heart, this movie left me a warm feeling in my heart. The movie brings back memories of Christmas day, finding eggs at Easter… Though the movie isn’t perfect, it’s certainly a family movie that should have the recognition is deserves.
Awww Monica — I think Pitch got them straight in their hearts.
THIS was the best movie I ever seen, this just was perfect, I feel all the characters in my heart and it was so amazing, I love everything, the light, the music, the animation, everything and this make me remember the most beautiful moments of my childhood, I don’t know why are you this bad such thing about this, I love it and no one will change my opinion. In a few days I’m going to see it for the third time, rthe first time I bring my mom, the second my whole family (cousin, aunt, grandma and grandfa) and they all love it, and now im going with my best friend, I hope this will help
I love it too as do my friends. I don’t know if critics see it from the eyes of a child. Only then will they see that the soul and the heart of this film is in its story. You can’t judge a story meant if all you see is how much money it made or didn’t make.
“Strong characters and storytelling are all the audience cares about”
As much as I like to give the benefit of doubt…
I’ve now proudly seen the film 7 times, in theaters all over the country, and have to add my voice to the group baffled at the film’s lack of success. If any animated film made in the past few years had the feeling of a classic, one that people will revisit for years to come, this was it. The story was heartfelt, the characters memorable, and the animation and art spectacular. In short, it was a terrific film, one worth seeing many times. Yet despite this, many people who should have gone, who should have given the film a chance, did not. To them, the only thing I can say is, there’s still time to see it, and see it you should. Word of mouth, particularly among people my age (20s) has been phenomenal, and so if people will just try the film with an open mind, I think many more potential audience members may still enjoy it. It likely won’t be enough to change the film’s financial fate significantly, but frankly, every ticket counts. And with worldwide earnings of $260 million, I think that exceeding Mr. Crockett’s estimates is completely within the realm of possibility.
To try and help the film, people who did see and enjoy it just need to continue to spread the word. I remember Box Office Mojo speculating the film wouldn’t even earn $90 million domestic a few weeks ago. It’s now at $94 million. Rise of the Guardians may not be a stellar success, but it doesn’t have to be a failure. And the staff within DreamWorks really loves the movie, so the better it does, the more chance there is that someday, something further will be done with this wonderful story.
I cannot help but agree with you! I’ve seen it 4 times. And each time it tugs my heart.
One counter example is the twilight films, which, except for despicable me, have affected animated movies that opened either in the same week or shortly after. For example Bolt, Planet 51, Happy Feet 2, and now this.
I love this movie and I would like to see a franchise out if thiS but if dreamworks has to take a writedown, it’s considered a box office bomb and dreamworks abandons the franchise plans. I find myself baffled a the lack of success since this is a dreamworks animation film and the subject matter should have played well to kids.
This is in response to the arguement that strong story and characters matter. Twilight is horrible but it succeeded anyway. Meanwhile, films like this and Frankenweenie bomb.
It’s more like people don’t like to be challenged often. Frankenweenie is certainly challenging for a tentpole Disney cartoon, but I can’t say the movie itself is that orignal and well-written.