Question: Why do some animated movies flop?

Question for the Emperor: Why do some animated movies flop?

So, first thing about animated movies is that your target audience has to be the family. The latest person to make this mistake was Robert Zemeckis, who lost a ton of money on Beowulf. Even Disney has made this mistake with Treasure Planet (Atlantis barely survived the mark).


If you want to target adults, you need to make cheap anime and release it on DVD (the expense of 3D won't get you a return; only the really popular anime can touch 3D, and, even then, it's only used for effects). If you want to target boys with action (movie mistakes include Sinbad, Treasure Planet, Final Fantasy, Titan AE, etc.) you need to get it on TV. (For example, Osmosis Jones flopped in the theater but made a successful TV cartoon.)



So, why do family animated movies do well? Women. Women won't go see action movies, especially cartoon ones. They are the ones driving what the kids see, so only the die hard moms give in and take kids to see animated action movies. On top of that, all the children (sons and daughters) want to go see Finding Nemo, but only the son wants to see TMNT. So they skip TMNT because over half the people who would have to see it are... Women. That's vital. They need to be the primary market (even if the movie is about super heroes or cars - Pixar knows this very well).

On top of that, men won't go see animated action films; they'd rather see Die Hard 4 than Beowulf.



So, if you make an animated action movie, all you're left with is boys, aged 7-19. That's a small market when the mom controls most of that money. That market is confined to the TV set.

Even flops like Ant Bully, Doogal, and Barnyard are squarely aimed at young boys. The mom has no motivation to take kids to those. Check out the poster for Ant Bully. It even looks like an action animation:

Look at all those posters above. There is no motivation for women and girls to see any of those movies based on those posters (or the movies themselves).

Read more about this here:

http://cartoondisneypics.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-action-animated-films-dont-do-well.html

- The Emperor