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Disney
- After the financial failures of Pinocchio and Fantasia on their initial releases (they've since been Vindicated by History), Disney planned for his next feature Dumbo to be a faster, low-budget "filler" movie that clocked in at only 64 minutes, something that even their distributor RKO Pictures had doubts about. It went on to become Disney's biggest hit since Snow White.
- Encanto got a surprisingly small amount of advertising for a major Disney animated release and was released just as COVID-19 cases started to go up, resulting in few families going out to the movie theaters. A month later on Christmas Eve, it was released on Disney+. And from there, the film quickly blew up on TikTok and other social media platforms. It wound up becoming one of the most watched movies on the platform by the next month and almost all of the songs landed on international charts, with "We Don't Talk About Bruno" in particular becoming such a popular meme that it topped the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK's Official Singles Chart, becoming the first original Disney song ever to do so on the latter.
- Frozen was this in several aspects:
- Disney at first hoped Frozen would do as well as Tangled, which looked like a tossup after the opening weekend. It ended up still making money in theaters several months after release. Eventually it topped Iron Man 3 to become the top-grossing film of 2013, making it one of the slowest films to do so on its initial release. At 155 days
, it was also the slowest film to reach $400 million at the domestic box office. So it took a while, but the audience kept coming. - The soundtrack and "Let It Go" also banked on the film's success. After word-of-mouth gave Frozen some steam, the sales of the soundtrack started picking up, and YouTube hits for official versions of "Let It Go"note were getting higher and higher, some into the hundreds of millions. Furthermore, the Demi Lovato version was the version Disney was banking on to become a hit single, but the film version overshadowed the Rewritten Pop Version, ended up being the version to appear on compilation albums, and even reaching top 5 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart despite minimal airplay at first.
- Even the merchandise was this. Disney based projections for toy sales based on initial sales of their previous princess films, The Princess and the Frog and Tangled, and some of the toys initially didn't even meet those. Suddenly, merchandise across the board was selling out for months. Even over five years later, Frozen merch is some of Disney's hottest. Some Disney fan videos assume that the main reason Anna and Elsa aren't part of the Disney Princess line is because the Frozen toyline is still selling so well.
- A Forbes article suggested that this was a deliberate strategy by Disney. Disney's marketing and trailers had sold it as yet another kid flick, emphasizing Olaf (the kid-appeal talking snowman) and similar kiddie elements. Then when parents got to the theatre, they were treated to one of the coolest films in years, and told all their friends about it, causing the film's popularity to surge wildly after the opening weekend.
- Disney at first hoped Frozen would do as well as Tangled, which looked like a tossup after the opening weekend. It ended up still making money in theaters several months after release. Eventually it topped Iron Man 3 to become the top-grossing film of 2013, making it one of the slowest films to do so on its initial release. At 155 days
- Most Disney executives thought that The Lion King was not going to make much money while Pocahontas was going to be the next big hit. The former was and still is the highest grossing hand-drawn animated film of all time.
- The Little Mermaid is a special case, as when it was first released, Disney didn't really expect it to be too big a success, especially with The Great Mouse Detective being beaten by An American Tail in 1986 and Oliver & Company being beaten by The Land Before Time in 1988. When The Little Mermaid went up against All Dogs Go to Heaven in 1989, Disney actually beat Don Bluth that year! The Little Mermaid's success in 1989 was what led to Beauty and the Beast in 1991, Aladdin in 1992 and The Lion King in 1994. The success of Mermaid also led to other animated musicals, not just from Disney, but from other animation studios.
- Disney had little faith in Robin Hood to the point that they had to resort to re-using animation from previous animated films. It still became a commercial success.
- Tangled wasn't expected to do particularly well, given that Disney's previous princess movie was a relative disappointment in terms of ticket and merchandise sales. It went on to make $591 million (more than any other Disney animated movie at the time excluding The Lion King) and the main character Rapunzel went on to become one of Disney's most popular princesses.
- Many people thought Zootopia would mainly be just a "filler" movie before Disney's next princess film Moana, and that its domestic box office grosses would be in line with Big Hero 6's at best (i.e. a little over $200 million). Then reviews and word-of-mouth spread about how Zootopia wasn't just a great film but also a highly topical story about prejudice. It ultimately ended up grossing over a billion dollars worldwide and is the second highest-grossing Disney Animation Studios film behind Frozen. This was nearly double the box office of Moana, which still ended up a respectable hit. It’s the highest grossing completely original movie (not based on an existing IP, a real event, or part of a franchise) of all time.
DreamWorks
- How to Train Your Dragon (2010) started out in first place, but was quickly knocked down after its disappointing premiere weekend. Word of mouth of its sheer brilliance took it back to the top in a month and it went on to spawn two sequels, as well as a number of short films and a television series.
- Kung Fu Panda is definitely a major example. Based on humorous clips in the trailers and the choice of having Jack Black voice the main character, many expected it to be a comedic satire of Martial Arts Movies. Much to everyone's surprise, the film was actually faithful to Chinese culture and had a powerful, dramatic storyline. Even China commended it as the way to do a Kung Fu movie. The film has since replaced Shrek as DreamWorks' Cash-Cow Franchise.
- The Prince of Egypt is buried under many of DreamWorks Animation's later CGI successes, but it opened in second on its opening weekend and was the highest grossing non-Disney animated film until Chicken Run and the highest grossing non-Disney 2D animated film until The Simpsons Movie.
- Puss in Boots: The Last Wish was expected to go out quietly due to the 11-year-long Sequel Gap, the recent underperformance of similar animated family films like Strange World and Lightyear, and being released the week after Avatar: The Way of Water. The Last Wish opened with a $12.4 million gross on its first weekend — an opening ''Variety'' called "unremarkable" and significantly below its projected $25-30 million gross. However, its quality surprised audiences and critics, and positive word of mouth kept it performing well through the holidays and January, and it eventually topped the first film's lifetime domestic gross despite opening significantly lower. By March 2023, the film had grossed over $480 million worldwide on a $90 million budget.
- Trolls was released when everyone believed that DreamWorks was well past its prime, having released a long string of original movies beforehand that, while none were actually bombs, could be considered as such for the standards they had established. However, due to Trolls being a musical, the fact that it was the first DreamWorks film aimed at children after years of making movies aimed mostly at a general family range, and star Justin Timberlake deliberately stabbing at the Breakaway Pop Hit trope by releasing the soundtrack's lead single "Can't Stop the Feeling!" well before the movie's release date, Trolls became one of the most successful movies of fall 2016, and eventually started a Cash-Cow Franchise. This improved further when the sequel Trolls World Tour was released, since it was considered a Surprisingly Improved Sequel.
- A bigger example of this happened in Japan with the spin-off series Trolls: The Beat Goes On!. Before the series began, DreamWorks Animation's films didn't do as well in Japan as they did overseas. After multiple box office failures in the country, ending with Megamind being released the exact same weekend as a major earthquake, the films went Direct to Video, including Trolls, where they still weren't gaining an audience. Despite this, TV Tokyo picked up the rights to The Beat Goes On! and tried hyping it up by using well-known Japanese celebrities as the voices of the characters and having idol group Tsubaki Factory promote the show. These methods paid off as the show wound up being a major success in Japan.
- Many viewers were initially worried that Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit would not do well outside of its native England, given that the series was barely well-known in America. When it was released though, it was well-received by American audiences and ended up topping the box office there. Though given the North American success of Chicken Run, which was made by the same studio, was it really a surprise?
Illumination Entertainment
- Despicable Me managed to net a terrific gross and critical reception, especially impressive given it was the debut for Universal's Illumination Entertainment and came out in the same year as How to Train Your Dragon, Toy Story 3, and Tangled, and even outdid dueling film Megamind, despite that film being made by an established studio. The blockbuster successes of its sequels and the Minions spin-off have turned Despicable Me into a bankable Cash-Cow Franchise.
- The Secret Life of Pets was not expected to do well, and was expected to only make as much as Illumination's films that weren't Despicable Me. But good word of mouth, along with a Minions short at the beginning of the film, helped the movie become successful. It topped the box office for two weeks and beat out Ice Age: Collision Course on its opening weekend.
- Sing had a relatively under-the-radar debut during Rogue One complete domination of the box office in December 2016, but it wound up becoming successful anyway in its own terms; it was the second consecutive sleeper hit for Illumination after Secret Life of Pets, ending My Big Fat Greek Wedding's 13-year-long reign as the highest-grossing film to never be ranked #1 at the U.S. domestic box office, and outgrossing Moana, an animated film that had debuted during the same season with more hype surrounding it.
Sony Pictures Animation
- Hotel Transylvania was seen by most people as just another goofy CGI animated comedy, and many thought it would fail, given that the more recent Adam Sandler movies of the time had a bad track record. But good word of mouth among kids combined with how much they love monsters helped it have the then-biggest September opening weekend for any movie. The success of the film spawned two sequels that were also big hits and a TV show, making the series Sony's very own Cash-Cow Franchise. Another sequel, Hotel Transylvania: Transformania, came out in 2022 on Prime Video.
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse debuted in 2018 at #1 the weekend before the other big-budget Christmas franchises (Aquaman, Bumblebee, Mary Poppins Returns) with a good, but not great $35 million. As the winter of 2019 wore on, it began to hold much better than its competition. Probably due to its incredible word of mouth and the fact that after Christmas there was no real reason to see The Grinch and this was the only other kids' movie out. It surpassed both the domestic and international totals of Mary Poppins Returns, despite it opening to $58 million domestically. It stomped the domestic total of Bumblebee by over $50 million but couldn't reach its international total (the Transformers franchise is incredibly popular in foreign markets, especially the huge Chinese market). It even managed to be "leggier" than the billion-dollar juggernaut of Aquaman as its domestic total was 5.29x its opening weekend whereas Aquaman's was 4.6x.
Other
- The Addams Family was released in a year where most animated films released up to that point had underperformed, if not outright bombed. Even films from some established studios were struggling, and the only other notable movie from this film's studio was Sausage Party. It opened to over $30M Worldwide, and ended up making over $200M on a $24M budget. A sequel was released in 2021, to a decent level of success.
- An American Tail debuted at a time when no-one had been able to top Disney in the animated film department. But a combination of a lack of real competition in the box office (Disney thought re-releasing Lady and the Tramp and Song of the South in theaters would stop it dead, which it didn't), having Steven Spielberg's name attached, and a popular Award-Bait Song made it the highest-grossing animated film ever at the time. This scared Disney enough to start trying to step up their game.
- Coraline was generally low-priority in terms of marketing because it didn't fit the mold of a typical children's film. But it was met with critical acclaim and became moderately popular, and even a little notorious for its pushing the PG rating.
- Elemental (2023): The film's opening weekend gross of $29.6 million against a budget of over $200 million led many to deem it the latest in a string of Disney flops and a sign that Pixar was losing its touch. Much of this was blamed on a middling reception at its Cannes premiere, opening against the much-hyped The Flash, a lackluster marketing campaign, and COVID-weary audiences apparently having been conditioned to wait for new Pixar films to hit Disney+. However, Elemental proved to have surprising legs during the crowded summer movie season, with a small but steady stream of revenue forming in the coming weeks; it was speculated that it was due to positive word-of-mouth and Disney (which underwent a major executive shakeup in November 2022) abandoning its streaming-focused release model by giving the film a longer theatrical window. It even managed to outgross The Flash, which had gone on to become one of the biggest bombs in history. Having grossed over $400 million so far, Elemental became Disney's biggest animated success since before the pandemic.
- Inside Out, having a mainly-female cast of main characters, was expected to not fare as well as previous Pixar movies. Then people actually watched it and had very positive reactions to it, scoring a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, becoming Pixar's biggest original success since Toy Story, and fully helping them Win Back the Crowd after a string of lackluster films. Although Jurassic World caused it to become the first Pixar film not to open at #1, Inside Out holds the honor of having the highest grossing opening not at #1 of all time (the previous champion being The Day After Tomorrow), as well as the highest-grossing Thursday opening of any animated film. Inside Out is also starting to become a cash cow for Disney due to its surprise success, but not as big as Frozen was - it was one of the best-selling DVDs and Blu-rays of 2015, merchandise is still being produced long after its release, a Disney on Ice show with Riley's emotions taking center stage has been produced, and a successful meet and greet has taken place at Disney World. And even within that, the character of Bing Bong could be considered this. He was kept a secret by the filmmakers until merchandise came out, but he later became such an Ensemble Dark Horse that plushies of him became one of the hard-to-find Christmas toys of 2015, selling for double the retail price; essentially, Bing Bong became the new Olaf.
- Isle of Dogs had a lot stacked up against it — it was a PG-13 animated film that wasn't a comedy, and it was directed by Wes Anderson, whose record of success was spotty to say the least. Unsurprisingly, many people expected it to bomb the way his previous animated outing, Fantastic Mr. Fox, did. Thanks to positive word of mouth and a relative lack of competition, it managed to gross $64 million on an estimated $30 million budget.
- Given that film adaptations of edutainment shows didn't tend to do well in theaters in the late 90's and early 2000's, Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie wasn't expected to have a good box office performance. However, it made 25 million dollars by the end of its' theatrical run, more than other movies of that type, and was the highest-grossing film based off an edutainment show for 17 years until Dora and the Lost City of Gold came out.
- The LEGO Movie was released in early February, considered for the most part to be a dump month for movies, and was expected to be a modest success at best. But then the awesome reviews and word of mouth started pouring in, and the film dominated the box office with the second highest February opening of all time and stayed on top for three weeks, beating out films such as RoboCop and The Monuments Men with ease, and ultimately grossing more than $400 million worldwide.note The film's surprise success has guaranteed it a sequel, two spin-off films, and a spin-off TV series (although none of these spinoffs have matched the original's success).
- Though it was only a limited release during June 2013 (it was originally intended to be a simple Made-for-TV Movie), and its initial announcement was met with ire from fans, My Little Pony: Equestria Girls actually was a huge success due to its parent show's massive fandom and the fact that it wasn't the clichéd Monster High ripoff said fandom expected it to be. Many screenings played to sold-out houses, causing more showtimes to be added to the movie's original showtimes. Later on, Hasbro/DHX got the hint to create two follow-up movies (Rainbow Rocks was released in September 2014, while Friendship Games was released September 2015), with a third headed for Netflix in 2016. It also helps that the toys and other merch sells very well.
- Sausage Party was practically an Audience-Alienating Premise when trailers for the film were finally released. It's an R-rated lowbrow comedy starring Seth Rogen and features anthropomorphic food engaging in a lot of raunchy humor. So naturally, many people expected it to fail. However, upon release, it was critically acclaimed and managed to make back its budget, with most people saying that the film is Better Than It Sounds.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- Similar to the HTTYD example, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie was not expected to do well, given the recent track run of Nicktoon-based movies, all of which were beaten out by Disney films.note Positive word of mouth shot the movie to #2 on its first weekend, only beaten by another Disney effort. Before Sponge Out of Water was released, it was the second highest-grossing 2D-animated theatrical adaptation of a Nicktoon (the first being The Rugrats Movie).
- The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water repeated the trick. It was originally expected to have a $30-40 million opening weekend but ended up grossing more than $50 million. It became the #1 movie in America (knocking American Sniper from the top spot) and not only scored the second-highest opening for an animated film based on a TV show (after The Simpsons Movie), but dethroned Scooby-Doo for the highest-grossing opening weekend for a Live-Action Adaptation of a TV show aimed at children.note This surprise success made SpongeBob the only Nicktoon to date to have all of its movies top the box office for at least one weekend. It also made more than the previous film and became the highest-grossing animated Nicktoon-based film (beating Rugrats' record) in just two weeks! The success of this film has many fans of traditionally-animated films hoping that this will cause 2D animated films to come back in style. Due to this, like Frozen above, The Merch of the film sold out and took months to meet demand.
