Animated movies have always been a fascinating genre of cinema. Every component of filmmaking has evolved since the art form’s inception, but it’s especially satisfying to look at the ways in which animation has grown and changed. What was once a fringe style for avant-garde storytellers has slowly become one of the most profitable types of films on the market.
Audiences have been able to chart the growth of Disney into the behemoth in animation that it is today, but they can also look at the many other competitors that have grown or fallen through the years. Now there are plenty of giants like DreamWorks, Illumination Entertainment, or even Aardman Animation that are challenging the medium as much as possible. The industry is arguably becoming more open than ever before.
Animation has grown so much more than musical comedies that revolve around princesses. They’re now the home for some of the most sophisticated stories on the market and it’s hardly a medium that’s reserved for younger audiences. Furthermore, the advent of animation has seen the birth and boon of 3D graphics and computer-animation that has added so much to the field. Animators have options if they want to tell 2D or 3D stories and the audiences are getting more great content as a result.
As the improvements in animation show no signs of slowing down, it seems only appropriate to look at some of the biggest hits and misses from the field.
With that said, here are the 20 Animated Movies That Flopped (And 10 That Became Massive Hits)!
Flop: A Troll In Central Park
Don Bluth is an irable name in animation that tried to provide an alternative against the giant machine that is Disney. Bluth found success with efforts like An American Tale or All Dogs Go to Heaven, but A Troll in Central Park parks the nadir in Bluth’s career.
The movie grossed a meager $71, 368 in North America when it came out in 1994 and it’s the least commercially and critically successful of Bluth’s efforts.
The movie presents a preachy, misguided story that involves a environmentally positive troll named Stanley who gets banished to Central Park. It fails to find a steady rhythm, but it also received minimal promotion from Warner Brothers before its release.
Flop: Arthur And The Invisibles
Arthur and the Invisibles is such a curious case because it's a tremendous failure, but it still manages to have enough of a built in audience from the children's books that it's based on that it still finds a home.
Arthur and the Invisibles has a lot of clout behind it, with Luc Besson as the writer and director and a $86 million budget. In fact, upon its release Arthur and the Invisibles was the most expensive French movie production of all time. The movie took a financial hit of $71 million and critics tore it apart. Despite this, due to its fan base in , it still would go on to spawn two sequels.
Hit: Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda takes the clever idea to remix classic kung fu tropes with an interesting cast of animals at its disposal and a strong respect for story. There’s also the incomparable Jack Black voicing the titular character, with many other great actors alongside him. Kung Fu Panda exploded at the box office and practically made five times its budget back, with a box office total of $631.7 million.
The movie would become such a success for DreamWorks that it would launch a whole series of films (some of which have performed even better than the original) and an animated series, too.
Flop: Norm Of The North
Norm of the North has good intentions, but it’s a lazy caper with a polar bear that fails to capture the magic of Pixar movies and is borderline condescending to its young audience. The movie is also an American-Indian-Irish co-production, which may speak to the problem of having too many cooks in the kitchen.
Norm of the North only grossed $30 million worldwide, which is not great in the greater scope of animated movies, but on a budget of $18 million the film still brought in a profit.
Norm of the North's notoriety perhaps lies in the fact that is had a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes up until recently (where it now sits at 9%).
Flop: The Pebble And the Penguin
The Pebble and the Penguin is another Don Bluth effort that shoots for the moon but sees such a dangerous life that it actually bankrupts Bluth's production company. He and co-director, Gary Goldman, even remove their names from the final product.
The Pebble and the Penguin tells the story of Hubie, a shy penguin who's in love. There's a decent love story in the film and an enviable voice cast that features Martin Short, Jim Belushi, and Tim Curry. Unfortunately, due to changes insisted by MGM, the film fell behind in production, Bluth and Goldman stepped away, and other companies completed the animation. It brought in under $4 million from a budget of $28 million.
Hit: Moana
Moana is one of the better examples of Disney hitting their stride in the more recent years. Moana respectfully pulls from Polynesian mythology to craft a story that has a more global perspective. Clearly this approach was effective because Moana performed well domestically, but it truly found a home overseas and tapped into something special.
The $150 million movie has grossed over $643.3 million and Moana fever has far from faded. The film received two Academy Award nominations and it wouldn't be surprising if more Moana stories were to come.
Flop: Doogal
Doogal is a fascinating story because it's actually based on an existing series from Europe called The Magic Roundabout. What's baffling here is that rather than simply re-release the original 2005 film, The Magic Roundabout, the Weinstein Company decides to re-dub the movie with American actors and re-write the script so it's inundated with pop culture and flatulence jokes.
A decent movie is destroyed for no reason and Doogal has an 8% on Rotten Tomatoes and is rife with production problems.
Its box office total of nearly $27 million is technically a profit, but a lot of that banks off of The Magic Roundabout’s success. Doogal only pulled in $7.4 million in North America.
Flop: Rock-A-Doodle
Perhaps one of the more ambitious Don Bluth efforts on here,Rock-A-Doodle carries a little more charm than Troll Central Park or Penguin and the Pebble, but it’s still far from a success. Rock-A-Doodle tells an ambitious story where a barnyard rooster leaves his home to become an Elvis-like rockstar, but in doing so the well being of the sun gets puts in jeopardy. Oh, and the rooster’s sidekick is a boy who’s been transformed into a kitten. Weirdness abounds.
On a budget of $18 million, Rock-A-Doodle took a loss with a box office total of $11.7 million, which would eventually lead to Bluth's studio needing to liquidate its assets.
Hit: Up
Up is a really special film that shows just what animated movies can achieve, but it seems like a fairly risky operation when it was in production. Pixar is now trusted to adeptly handle heavy emotional stories that don't shy away from honestly, but Up is one of the most brutal examples of that. The movie deals with topics like loss, grief, and even the inability to have a child. It's a very morose story, but it also acts as proof that kids can handle such things and that they can still find success.
Up was nominated for Best Picture, has a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, and has made over $735 million worldwide.
Flop: Astro Boy
The 2009 computer-animated take on the popular Astro Boyanime is a particularly harsh blow. The film is a co-production between the US and Japan and the property has the strong history to succeed, but this effort does nottake.
The movie covers Astro Boy's origin story and critics were mostly unimpressed.
The biggest blow is that the $65 million film barely recoups half of its budget with its worldwide box office total of $39.8 million. Films like this are tailor made to succeed overseas and yet Astro Boy still flops. It’s a strong example of why trusting in the medium’s original style is always a good idea. Computer graphics were never the right approach.
