The Wild Robothas hit a major global milestone, possibly breaking even in the process. The new DreamWorks animated movie follows Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) a robot who finds herself stranded on a desert island and forges a motherly bond with an orphaned gosling named Brightbill (Kit Connor).TheWild Robotreleasekicked off with a middling $35.8 million opening weekend, but it has had a slow and steady climb to become the fifth highest-grossing animated movie of the year so far, behindThe Garfield Movie,Kung Fu Panda 4,Despicable Me 4, andInside Out 2.
PerBox Office Mojo,The Wild Robothas passed the $200 million milestone worldwideas of its fifth weekend in theaters. It has become the 16th movie to pass that milestone so far in 2024 and will shortly overtakeGhostbusters: Frozen Empire($201.8 million) as the 15th highest-grossing movie of the year worldwide. Additionally, it has seemingly become profitable at long last, as its $78 million budget likely means that its break-even point was somewhere around $195 million.
Part of this total may have come from a box office bump that the movie received when moviegoers under the age of 17 were seeminglybuying tickets to the animated movie so they could sneak in to see the gory R-rated slasherTerrifier 3, a phenomenon that was reported byTHR.
What This Means For The Wild Robot
The Movie’s Slow-Burn Success Is Impressive
The movie reaching this milestone proves that it is well on its way to achieving sleeper hit status. This is likely being propelled by glowingThe Wild Robotreviewsfrom both critics and audiences that have earned it a Certified Fresh score of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes alongside a matching Verified Hot score of 98% from user reviews on the platform’s Popcornmeter.
Verified Hot is a newly introduced Rotten Tomatoes badge which rewards theatrical movies that have struck a chord with audiences.
Its slow-burn success further cements the recent trend of animated featureshaving middling to disappointing debuts, only to rise to solid numbers as their theatrical releases continue. The most notable instance of this was Illumination’s 2023 hitMigration, which only debuted to $12.4 million but eventually rose to a worldwide total of $299.8 million. The same was the case forPixar’sElemental, which was declared a flop when it debuted to just $29.6 million, but eventually became the third highest-grossing animated movie of 2023 with $496.4 million.
Our Take On The Wild Robot Milestone
The Movie Can Climb Even Higher
WhileElementalrose at a faster pace thanThe Wild Robot, the DreamWorks movie has maintained its lead ahead ofMigrationin week 5. If it continues to stay ahead of that title, its overall worldwide box office grosscould eventually climb to $330 million or more worldwide. Should that be the case, it will have surpassed its break-even point by nearly $150 million, making it a substantial hit for its budget level and more than justifying the sequel that is already in the early stages of development.
The Wild Robot
Cast
The Wild Robot is an animated drama film based on a series of books by Peter Brown. The adaptation is written and directed by Chris Sanders and stars Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, and Catherine O’Hara. The Wild Robot centers on a robot named Rozzum 7134, who becomes stranded on a deserted island and the guardian of a young orphan.
