See here for examples from Walt Disney Studios
Dreamworks
- Disney's close competitor DreamWorks Animation has also had its fair share of surprise hits:
- Kung Fu Panda was announced at a time when most DreamWorks Animation movies were receiving mixed to negative reviews (especially Shark Tale and Bee Movie) and had suffered from Audience Alienating Premises. Kung Fu Panda was expected to be a movie with a one-joke premise (a fat panda doing Kung Fu), but what audiences got was an action-packed animated flick with enough heart, humor, and fleshed-out characters to go around. Add on respect to Chinese culture and a good message, and you have a movie that not only restored audience faith in Dreamworks, but is also considered to be their best movie (alongside How to Train Your Dragon). Its success inspired 3 sequels, 2 TV shows, and countless rip-offs.
- Trolls World Tour: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic causing theaters to shut down worldwide, World Tour was one of the first films to be released on video-on-demand rather than be postponed to a later date. Many initially viewed this as Universal giving up on the movie and just trying to recoup their losses, especially after the massive flops of Cats and Dolittle. Within three weeks, World Tour made over $100 million dollars in rentals, breaking digital records across the board and making more money for Universal than the first film made for 20th Century Fox within five months.
- The Croods: A New Age was released in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though the first movie was a hit and well received, it came out seven years prior and no one thought that it had a large enough following to justify a trip to the theater (at that point, the only tentpole released was Tenet, which bombed). It opened to $9.7m in its opening weekend (the highest since Tenet), but it went on to have a greater staying power, earning $58.6m domestically (a x6 multiplier) and $216m worldwide, making it one of the first cinematic success stories of the pandemic era.
- Puss in Boots: The Last Wish didn't have anything going for it: during the 11 years in Development Hell following the first movie, Dreamworks had fallen out of favor, specially as distributor Universal had their own Illumination Entertainment to provide animated hits; the parent Shrek franchise was dormant, and the middling reception to the later installments (including the first Puss in Boots) would not do any favors; and during the opening weekend winter storms blanked a significant portion of the United States that could watch the movie, leading to a very weak $6 million opening. But reviewers and audiences alike were taken back on how thematically deep and visually impressive the movie was, widely describing it as one of the studio's best offerings, and once the weather was better the box office would recover handsomely with a 500% weekend increase to $38 million on Christmas, preceding a run where it would consistently be the biggest moneymaker behind Avatar: The Way of Water (aside from two weeks surpassed by M 3 GAN), and one month after release the movie had earned over $300 million worldwide.
Warner Animation Group
- When The LEGO Movie was announced, it was scorned by critics and most believed it would be nothing more beyond a glorified toy commercial. Few could have predicted it would turn out to be a fresh, original film with stellar animation, witty humor, memorable characters, an engaging plot, and a brilliant deconstruction of The Chosen One trope. The success led to both a sequel and the spin-off The LEGO Batman Movie.
- As soon as Teen Titans Go! To the Movies was announced, many immediately dismissed the idea due to it being a spinoff of one of the Internet's most hated modern cartoons, even going so far as to say that it would be as bad as, or worse than The Emoji Movie, which is not exactly well-regarded itself. By the time of the film's release, however, it received largely positive reviews, gaining a 91%
on Rotten Tomatoes, and did mildly well at the box office.
Others
- This was the fan community reaction to the Friendship Is Magic spin-off My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, due it being a High School AU of My Little Pony... without the ponies. Things only seemed to get worse as pictures of the prototype dolls and stock art leaked, with more than one person crying that the parent show was
Ruined FOREVER and that it would be a Franchise Killer. Instead, it became a big enough hit to warrant multiple sequels that each received better reception than the last, with the Big Bad (and later Hero Protagonist) of the spinoff franchise becoming a fan-favorite character. - While the franchise that The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water is based on is highly profitable, it had gone through a lengthy period of Seasonal Rot, so people didn't have as much confidence in the film as they did with the first (a beloved classic), predicting that it would be just a standard, boring kiddie fare. The fact that it was done by the show's current crew, whom the fans blamed for its declining quality, supported their theory. Despite what the trailers presented, the creators outright confirmed that the film would, like the show, be mostly 2D animation, a major concern for some considering that the 2D animation genre had generated flop after flop over the years (the last 2D animated hit was the movie's predecessor, over ten years ago). It also went against the visual-heavy and high concept blockbuster Jupiter Ascending. Despite these odds, it managed to cannibalize the box office in its opening weekend, went on to surpass the domestic box office of the first film both unadjusted and adjusted for inflation, and won plaudits for featuring the witty humor that the series was once known for from both critics and long-jaded fans.
- Sing: Not too many people expected this film to succeed, with many claiming that it was a stale copy of Zootopia with a very cliché, unoriginal plot about a singing competition. Despite all this, the movie managed to earn nearly $200 million in under two weeks, was the second leading film during Christmas weekend at the box office and has gotten mixed to positive reviews by both critics and fans alike. The film was nominated for the Best Animated Feature Golden Globe in 2017.
- Sing 2 also caught a bad moment, with overall underperfomance of animated movies amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a way too revealing trailer, and Spider-Man: No Way Home opening shortly prior (wrecking the box office prospects of just about every other big release of December 2021). Despite it all, Sing 2 managed to become the highest grossing animated film of 2021 and the tenth highest grossing film of the same year, while again getting good reviews.
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie: After the failure of the 1993 film that notoriously created the curse of video game movies being bad, Nintendo had shied away from any and all film adaptations of their properties, save for Pokémon and a one-off Animal Crossing movie. In 2018, Nintendo had announced it was working with Illumination Entertainment to produce an animated film based on the Mario series. Given Illumination's divisiveness in the animation industry, many had already felt unsure of this decision. It was also directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, who are well-known for Teen Titans Go!, another divisive animation property. When the cast was revealed years later, much criticism and concern over the choices, including Chris Pratt as Mario, had arose. When footage was finally shown in 2022, some but not all concerns were alleviated. Upon the film's release in 2023, despite many critics giving the film mixed reviews, Nintendo and Illumination's joint production became openly embraced by longtime Mario fans and children alike, making more than $300 million in its opening weekend. And following that, it has become not only the highest grossing movie based on a video game, but also the first to hit $1 billion worldwide and the highest-grossing animated film made by a company other than Disney, all within a month of release.
