Top 10 animated films (box office) of past 10 years (1 Viewer)

[steve jaros]

Someone requested this, so:

Worldwide box office, in *unadjusted* millions of US dollars:

1) Lion King...... 766.9
2) Monsters Inc... 529.0
3) Toy Story 2.... 485.7
4) Shrek.......... 478.1
5) Tarzan......... 447.1
6) Ice Age........ 373.4
7) A Bug's Life... 361.8
8) Toy Story...... 358.2
9) Dinosaur....... 347.8
10) Pocahontas.... 345.9

Wow - No wonder the Lion King has been called the 'most profitable movie ever'...

FYI - if we went back to 1990, Aladdin (497.3) and Beauty and the Beast (348.4) would have crashed the list.

Obviously, at $275 million in the US alone, Finding Nemo will soon be on this list (as are all the Disney/Pixar films).

PS - to the moderators: Forgive me if this is in the wrong place. I looked in the 'polls' section and didn't see anything like this, so i put it here.

 

[Patrick McCart]

Sadly, the lowest grossing is likely one of the best animated films ever. (The Thief and the Cobbler)

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Wow - No wonder the Lion King has been called the 'most profitable movie ever'...

Says who? It depends on your definition of "profitable", I suppose, but Lion King apparently made about 10 times its cost. Jurassic Park earned almost 15 times its budget. Of course, Blair Witch took in 4000 times its budget in the US alone!

 

[Morgan Jolley]

7 of those films were CGI. That's kind of sad.

 

[Chris]

True, but the box office isn't adjusted. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure Snow White would be in the Top 10.

 

[steve jaros]

Colin - the claim that the LK is perhaps most-profitable ever is based on not just BO but also ancillary revenues, such as the huge quantities of licensed products (video games, toys, etc.) that were sold worldwide, plus the record-breaking video sales (IIRC, the LK sold 26 million VHS copies, a record that still stands).

 

[steve jaros]

CHRIS -

If we use adjusted dollars, and if we go back beyond 10 years, *4* of the classic Disney animated films beat the Lion King's *domestic* (don't know about worldwide) gross:

1) the Jungle Book .... $528.7 million

2) Snow White.......... $518.8 million

3) 101 Dalmations...... $500.8 million

4) Fantasia............ $395.3 million

5) Lion King........... $356.8 million


Note that the Jungle Book and Snow White are 9th and 10th on the all-time domestic adjusted box office list for all films. "Dalmatians" is 12th, "Fantasia" is 23rd, and LK 29th.

 

[Chris]

The Lion King has also been a perenial ratings blockbuster when shown on ABC, including it's sequels, as well as spawning cartoon adventures of Timon & Pumba, and a cereal that came out years after the movie.

The ancillaries of this film are huge. Outside of "Winnie the Pooh" Disney's biggest profit center, Lion King has to rank right up there.

Good to see that Jungle Book scores so highly. Still one of my favorites of the Disney classics. Too bad about the remakes and sequels on that one.

 

[GregH]

If you're talking about the standard version of the Thief and the Cobbler with Matthew Broderick as the thought narration and Ernest Borgnine mumbling then I don't think I can agree. I didn't think that there was an actual release of the original though. I'd have to throw in 2 cents for Iron Giant (American-only), but this really isn't a poll-type thread.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Colin - the claim that the LK is perhaps most-profitable ever is based on not just BO but also ancillary revenues, such as the huge quantities of licensed products (video games, toys, etc.) that were sold worldwide, plus the record-breaking video sales (IIRC, the LK sold 26 million VHS copies, a record that still stands).

If we factor in all that stuff, doesn't it seem likely that Star Wars would be #1?

 

[steve jaros]

Colin -

Obviously, Star Wars would be on any short list of most-profitable films ever...

 

[Neil Joseph]

I like all of those except Pocahontas,

 

[Patrick McCart]

If you're talking about the standard version of the Thief and the Cobbler with Matthew Broderick as the thought narration and Ernest Borgnine mumbling then I don't think I can agree. I didn't think that there was an actual release of the original though. I'd have to throw in 2 cents for Iron Giant (American-only), but this really isn't a poll-type thread.

Johnathan Winters did the narration for the speechless thief. And yes, I was referring to the "director's cut" or the workprint.

The "Aladdin ripoff" version (supervised by Fred Calvert) is likely the animated equal to the destruction of Welles' Magnificent Ambersons.

 

[Tino]

So Steve

What do you think the chances are of this thread surviving on its own?

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> 7 of those films were CGI. That's kind of sad.

Why?

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I think it's sad because it shows the total lack of quality traditional animation that has been created in the last decade. Disney hasn't created more than maybe 2 animated films worth actually seeing in theaters and subsequently buying on DVD within the last few years, which is sad considering they made Aladdin, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid relatively close to eachother.

 

[steve jaros]

Tino - let's keep our fingers crossed.

Morgan - How many more or less 'traditional' animation films has Disney made (i say more or less because all of their post-1990 films, even B&B, had some CGI in them)?

By my count, 6 in the past 5 years.

Of those, I was glad i saw Tarzan, Mulan, that goofy film from winter 2001, and Lilo/Stich. Yes, Treasure Planet and Atlantis were sub-par, but that's still 4/6 worth seeing in my book...

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Morgan - How many more or less 'traditional' animation films has Disney made (i say more or less because all of their post-1990 films, even B&B, had some CGI in them)?

By my count, 6 in the past 5 years.

Of those, I was glad i saw Tarzan, Mulan, that goofy film from winter 2001, and Lilo/Stich. Yes, Treasure Planet and Atlantis were sub-par, but that's still 4/6 worth seeing in my book...

Tarzan was good once or twice, Mulan was cool, I didn't like Emperor's New Groove, and I thought Lilo & Stitch was highly overrated (more or less because it was the first Disney film in a while that was more than just OK). Add to that the fact that Toy Story (1 and 2), A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo were all released under Disney (but made by Pixar) and are highly superior to everything Disney has done since The Lion King, and it just becomes and even sadder situation.

And even worse, the first two films to win Best Animated Film Oscars were a CGI one (Shrek) and an anime (Spirited Away).

 

[Seth Paxton]

I wonder if the non-CGI failures lately aren't more self-fulfilling prophecies than a true trend.

Studios don't put their best writers/efforts toward the non-CGI stuff which results in a film that just isn't as good, which in turn doesn't do as well, which in turn causes studios to lose faith in non-CGI films.


Honestly, I think that a non-CGI version of Shrek could have done pretty well. Maybe not as well as it did, but still pretty good. I know a lot of family types who enjoyed Spirited Away a lot with their kids, so a good story will still satisfy an audience.

At some point a CG animated film is going to be less of the cool thing and more of just another way of doing it. At that point even a CG film will require a good story.

I mean Jimmy Neutron only made $80m while Rugrats 1 did $100m and Rugrats 2 did $75m, comparing CG and non-CG TV show to film translations. CG is not enough by itself to set a film apart and can still be outsold by traditional animation.

I think an Iron Giant 2 would do very good biz, though it is another traditional that uses CG for some aspects. Still it is presented as a non-CG film and appears to have a very good following that found it on video.