‘The Wild Robot’ Set To Walk Through Weekend With $20M+ Opening; ‘Megalopolis’ Finally Happens – Box Office Preview

More family films hitting cinemas this weekend with DreamWorks Animation/Universal’s feature take of Peter Brown’s New York Times bestseller, The Wild Robot, however, unlike Paramount/Hasbro’s Transformers One last weekend, this one is mom/female leaning. Opening weekend at 3,900 theaters is pegged at $20M+.

That’s around the average start for an animated major studio movie in September and not that far from where we saw Transformers One last weekend with $24.6M. Also keep in mind that it’s original animation, and that’s always a lower bar start than established feature cartoons.

Wild Robot will have the vast majority of premium screens with 380 Imax hubs with all showtimes up to primetime. After that time, Lionsgate’s Megalopolis from Francis Ford Coppola will have evening Imax showtimes in key metropolitan locations, repping around 200 of its 1,700 theater count. Overall, for Wild Robot, there’s close to 900 PLF screens including all Dolby Cinema, Screen X, and 4DX. Around 20% are 3D showtimes. Previews start Thursday at 2PM. Warner Bros’ Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will also have access to some evening Imax screens in its fourth weekend.

Universal is very serious about Wild Robot as an Oscar contender and have been pushing it, not only at CinemaCon, but with a human size robot at San Diego Comic-Con voiced live by Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o who plays the protagonist in the movie, ROZZUM unit 7134, “Roz”. Wild Robot recently made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival where it earned 98% fresh grade from reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes.

In the pic, Roz is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling. Pic is directed by 3x Oscar nominee Chris Sanders—the writer-director of DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods, and Disney’s Lilo & Stitch—and is produced by Jeff Hermann (DreamWorks Animation’s The Boss Baby 2: Family Business; co-producer, Kung Fu Panda franchise). Voice cast includes Pedro Pascal as fox Fink, Catherine O’Hara as opossum Pinktail; Bill Nighy as goose Longneck; Kit Connor as gosling Brightbill and Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu as Vontra, a robot that will intersect with Roz’s life on the island. Mark Hamill, Matt Berry and Ving Rhames also round out the voice cast.

Wild Robot already invaded eight offshore marketings grossing $8M to date, with $2.2M from Australia. She’ll hit an additional 21 foreign markets this week including Mexico, the Middle East, and Central America.

The $120M dystopian family ensemble drama, Megalopolis, starring Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Jon Voight, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel and Shia LaBeouf is tracking to $5M-$7M. Yesterday, the self-financed Coppola movie had its New York Film Festival premiere but also played in a total of 60 paid previews around the country, some select markets featuring the live actor who appears in the middle of the movie during a “press” sequence with Driver’s lead character on screen. Those shows are billed as “The Ultimate Experience”. I understand yesterday made around $300K and that money will be rolled into previews which start Thursday at 6PM. Megalopolis despite screening to buyers before Cannes and coming away from the Croisette had a hard-time finding buyers given how idiosyncratic it is. As such, this is a distribution deal for Lionsgate: They are not on the hook for marketing costs nor any share of the production budget. That’s all Coppola. Lionsgate’s distribution fee is fee-based plus some percentage points based on box office. Sources in the know tell me the Santa Monica-based studio can walk away with $3M-$5M on this 2 hour and 18 minute running epic, no matter how badly it bombs. Despite the 51% critical reviews on Rotten Tomatoes coming away from its Cannes premiere where Coppola earned a seven-minute standing ovation, there’s intrigue for the auteur’s latest: I understand a bulk of the AMC presales are for Imax shows.

Transformers One off great exits is hoping to ease -50% or less for around $12M in weekend 2. Similar to the weekend, on Monday, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice beat Transformers One, $1.68M to $1.25M. Running total on the Tim Burton directed sequel is $228.4M while the Josh Cooley directed animated pic stands at a running cume of $25.8M through four days.

IFC also has the horror movie, Azrael, in 750-plus sites. The E.L. Katz directed movie which had its world premiere at SXSW stars Samara Weaving in the title role. Pic’s blurb: In a world where no one speaks, a devout female-led community hunts down a young woman who has escaped imprisonment. Recaptured, Azrael is due to be sacrificed to an ancient evil in the wilderness, but fights for her own survival.