Movie Spotlight - Happy Feet

Happy Feet
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It takes just one look at this year's list of digitally animated films to realize two things. One, there have been far too many of them. And two, far too few of them have been major hits. Only one such film has reached $200 million, and only two others have topped $100 million. In the end, ticket sales for digitally animated films in 2006 might not top those for 2004, despite having more than three times as many releases in theaters.

That's not an encouraging sign for the release of Happy Feet this weekend, but the penguin pic has a couple of things working in its favor. First, it's being released at just about the perfect time for a family movie. Second, it has penguins in it. We'll take a look at what this is likely to add up to at the box office.

Box Office Performance for Digital Animation Movies in 2006

Rank	Movie	Genre	MPAA	2006 Gross	Tickets Sold	Inflation- Adjusted Gross
1	Cars	Comedy	G	$244,052,771	38,073,755	$244,052,770
2	Ice Age: The Meltdown	Adventure	PG	$195,329,763	30,472,662	$195,329,763
3	Over the Hedge	Comedy	PG	$155,019,340	24,183,984	$155,019,337
4	Open Season	Adventure	PG-13	$82,103,966	12,808,731	$82,103,966
5	Barnyard: The Original Party Animals	Comedy	PG	$72,779,000	11,353,978	$72,778,999
6	Hoodwinked	Comedy	PG	$51,224,985	7,991,417	$51,224,983
7	The Wild	Adventure	G	$37,371,315	5,830,158	$37,371,313
8	Flushed Away	Comedy	PG	$28,320,769	4,418,217	$28,320,771
9	The Ant Bully	Adventure	PG	$28,075,347	4,379,929	$28,075,345
10	Everyone's Hero	Adventure	G	$14,452,026	2,254,606	$14,452,024
11	The Polar Express	Adventure	G	$10,042,916	1,566,758	$10,042,919
12	Doogal	Adventure	G	$7,578,946	1,182,363	$7,578,947
13	Chicken Little	Adventure	G	$3,442,012	536,975	$3,442,010
14	Renaissance	Action	R	$63,260	9,869	$63,260
15	Alien Adventure	Adventure	Not Rated	$43,121	6,727	$43,120
Total Gross of All Movies				$929,899,537
Total Tickets Sold					145,070,129
Total Gross of All Movies at 2005 ticket prices						$929,899,527

- Story continues below

Jumping on the Bandwagon

Similar Movies Released at Similar Times

Volcano

First Movie			Second Movie
Movie	Release Date	US Gross	Movie	Release Date	US Gross
Dante's Peak	2/7/1997	$67,163,857	4/25/1997	$47,546,796
Deep Impact	5/8/1998	$140,464,664	Armageddon	7/1/1998	$201,578,182
Sky High	7/29/2005	$63,939,454	Zoom	8/11/2006	$11,631,245
Capote	9/30/2005	$28,750,530	Infamous	10/13/2006	$1,123,153*
United 93	4/28/2006	$31,483,450	World Trade Center	8/9/2006	$70,236,496
The Illusionist	8/18/2006	$39,071,570*	The Prestige	10/20/2006	$47,116,082*

* Movie still in theaters

If there's anything Hollywood is known for it's originality. Ha, ha, ha. Good joke. In reality, with the number of projects being worked on in Hollywood at any one time, there are inevitable overlaps in themes and storylines. And once one movie with a particular theme gets greenlit (let's say a volcano disaster movie, for example) everyone working on similar projects is faced with a choice: make your movie right away and hope to be first to market, or start looking for something else to work on.

When a movie comes out of nowhere and makes a fortune at the box office, you can be sure that all the projects with related themes suddenly start to look very interesting to studio executives. Witness the effect of the out-of-nowhere-hit March of the Penguins. Once that documentary earned more than $75 million domestically, it seemed that everyone in town had a penguin movie ready to be made. Happy Feet, Surf's Up, Opus: The Last Christmas, and Farce of the Penguins are all upcoming films featuring penguins (although the last film is now going direct-to-DVD).

Interestingly, in the table above of similar-themed movies released in close proximity to one another, there isn't necessarily a huge advantage in going first. While Sky High and Capote do seem to have sated the market's appetite for movies about superhero high schools and Truman Capote respectively, Armageddon wasn't badly impacted by the earlier success of Deep Impact.

It's hard to imagine that Happy Feet marks the beginning of a major new industry trend - we don't plan to add "Penguin" to our movie categorization system any time soon. So the question is, how many penguin movies will the market bear? That's a serious questions in judging the box office potential of these movies. Fortunately for Happy Feet, it is still early in the trend, and it looks as though it will ride to box office glory partly on the coat-tails of its French predecessor. But by the time the others come out, the movie-going audience might be sick of these birds.

The Weekend Before Thanksgiving

Released	Movie	1st Weekend	Gross after Thanksgiving	Gross at end of year	Final US gross
11/18/2005	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	$102,335,066	$201,010,207	$275,132,632	$290,013,036
11/19/2004	Spongebob Squarepants	$32,018,216	$58,793,169	$81,900,075	$85,416,609
11/21/2003	The Cat in the Hat	$38,329,160	$75,830,805	$97,011,510	$101,018,283
11/22/2002	Die Another Day	$47,072,040	$101,379,700	$146,699,881	$160,932,247
11/16/2001	Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone	$90,294,621	$186,978,513	$291,594,218	$317,557,891

The weekend before Thanksgiving is probably the best time to release a family-oriented movie, particularly if you expect it to have strong legs. You get the benefit of a decent opening weekend, a guaranteed audience for the five day weekend to come, and then steady business through the Christmas season. As the chart above shows, this can really pay off for a movie. Very roughly, box office receipts fall into equal thirds: opening weekend, Thanksgiving week, and the Christmas Season. As a rough guide, you can expect to see a movie like Happy Feet triple its opening weekend gross by the end of the holidays. Based on current tracking, that gives the penguin movie an expected box office somewhere in the range of $120 million, which should be more than satisfactory for the studio.