Summary Kids’ movies like “Onward” and “The BFG” can still underperform at the box office, despite their appeal to family audiences.
Beloved children’s movies such as “Matilda” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” initially bombed, but later gained cult classic status.
Even acclaimed films like “Hugo” and “The Iron Giant” struggled to make a profit, highlighting the unpredictability of success in Hollywood.
Kids’ movies tend to do really well at the box office, thanks to their broad appeal, but that’s not always the case – even for great movies like The Iron Giant. Movies that appeal to kids are usually a sure-fire success, because parents can be relied on to buy multiple tickets. Taking the kids to watch a movie is an easy way to keep them entertained for a couple of hours. The two biggest box office hits of the year – The Super Mario Bros. Movie, adapted from a popular video game franchise, and Barbie, adapted from a popular doll line – have reaped the rewards of appealing to family audiences.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a sure-fire success in Hollywood. This summer alone, a handful of movies that were expected to do well purely based on their I.P. branding – from The Flash to The Little Mermaid to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – have underperformed at the box office. Some of the most beloved kids’ movies ever made, from Matilda to Treasure Planet to Fantastic Mr. Fox, bombed at the box office on their initial release (before being rightfully recognized as cult classics later down the line).
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10 Matilda (1996)
Danny DeVito’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda – about a telekinetic kid who uses her powers to rebel against her abusive parents and her school’s evil headmistress – may have captured the weirdness of the source material a little too closely to become a blockbuster. This quirky little fantasy caper has the makings of a cult classic, not a mainstream hit. With a worldwide gross of just $33 million, Matilda came in just shy of its $36 million production budget (via Box Office Mojo). It eventually found success in the home media market and took its rightful place as a beloved cult classic.
9 Onward (2020)
Pixar’s Onward was one of the first movies to suffer from the effects of the pandemic. It came out in theaters just as governments across the globe were starting to roll out lockdowns in 2020. As a result, it ended up grossing just $133 million on a whopping production budget of $200 million (via The Numbers). Set in a world populated by fantasy creatures, Onward is a moving story about two brothers trying to use unpredictable magic to reunite with their late father. Along the way, the younger brother realizes the older brother has always been there for him as a father figure.
8 The BFG (2016)
Matilda isn’t the only Roald Dahl adaptation that bombed at the box office; Steven Spielberg’s movie version of The BFG flopped, too. It barely outgrossed its $140 million production budget with a worldwide total of $195 million (via Box Office Mojo). The BFG has all the Spielbergian whimsy that fans could want. His film adaptation brings Dahl’s story to life with breathtaking visuals, heartfelt performances – including a terrific turn by Mark Rylance as the titular “Big Friendly Giant” – and a lighthearted take on the darker themes of the book.
7 Treasure Planet (2002)
Disney’s Oscar-nominated animated adventure Treasure Planet transplants the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island into an intergalactic sci-fi setting. Sadly, Treasure Planet bombed at the box office, making just $109 million on a $140 million budget (via Box Office Mojo). It has a great story, great characters, stunning visuals (achieved through the groundbreaking juxtaposition of hand-drawn 2D animation against 3D animated backgrounds), and it might’ve won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature if Spirited Away hadn’t come out in the same year.
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6 Flushed Away (2006)
Aardman ventured away from claymation and into the world of computer animation for Flushed Away. Flushed Away is a culture-clash romance about a pampered pet rat named Roddy who gets flushed down his owner’s toilet and embarks on a dangerous adventure in the sewer. Along the way, he falls for a resourceful sewer rat named Rita. It has a ton of great gags, and the love story is really engaging, but Flushed Away flopped at the box office. It cost $149 million to make, exponentially more than the studio’s usual stop-motion productions, and made back just $178 million (via Box Office Mojo).
5 Missing Link (2019)
Laika’s attempt to branch out into a more mainstream style of animation ironically resulted in their lowest-grossing movie by far. Missing Link revolves around a Sasquatch who travels to the Himalayas with a pair of British explorers. This premise promises plenty of humor and excitement – and the movie delivers both in spades – but audiences didn’t turn up for it. Missing Link became one of the biggest box office failures of all time; it lost just over $100 million for the studios (via Deadline).
4 Hugo (2011)
Martin Scorsese usually makes violent films about abusive antiheroes who murder and steal. But in 2011, he tried his hand at a kids’ movie with Hugo, about a young boy who lives in a train station in 1930s Paris. Despite being universally praised by critics, it was a box office bomb. Hugo cost $180 million to make and grossed exactly $180 million at the worldwide box office (via The Numbers). In its second half, when Hugo encounters pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès, the movie becomes a lesson in cinema history. For cinephiles, this is fascinating, but for kids, it might get a little boring.
3 The Good Dinosaur (2015)
Set in an alternate world in which the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs missed Earth, The Good Dinosaur is a boy-and-his-dog story in which the boy is an evolved dinosaur and the dog is a feral boy. The Good Dinosaur’s theatrical run wasn’t a complete disaster – it made back its production budget – but it didn’t break even, so it made history as Pixar’s first ever box office bomb. The film made $333 million against a budget of $187.5 million (via The Numbers). Even if it didn’t resonate at the time, it’s still a touching tale of friendship.
2 Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Roald Dahl adaptations just can’t catch a break at the box office. In addition to Matilda and The BFG, Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated version of Fantastic Mr. Fox was a commercial failure. It cost $40 million to produce, and despite universal acclaim and the presence of A-list voice actors like George Clooney and Meryl Streep, it barely made that money back with a worldwide gross of $46 million (via Box Office Mojo). Fantastic Mr. Fox is a near-perfect movie, but its use of adult themes like marital strife may have alienated the younger viewers who could’ve made it a hit.
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1 The Iron Giant (1999)
Before directing such hits as The Incredibles and Ratatouille, Brad Bird made his directorial debut with The Iron Giant, a retro ‘50s-set sci-fi adventure about the friendship between a young boy and a misunderstood 50-foot killing machine. The Iron Giant mixes the heartwarming coming-of-age story of E.T. with the mythic themes of Superman. It’s now recognized as one of the greatest animated movies ever made, but in its original theatrical run, it grossed just $23 million against a budget of $70 million (via Box Office Mojo).
Source: Box Office Mojo, The Numbers, Deadline