#anyway just saw ruby gillman: teenage kraken

[fencecollapsed]

one thing about Toni Collette is she will play a mother

[rosemaidenvixen]

I just saw Ruby Gillman Teenage Kraken and I really liked it. A few things were clunky but overall it was a really enjoyable film. The biggest issue I had wasn't with the film itself, but the marketing. The trailer gives too much away, so when I sat down and saw the whole movie, I basically knew how everything was going to turn out.

If you haven't seen the trailer please do yourself a favor and go watch the movie blind. It's a really great flick that deserves some love.

Anyways this is my long way of saying that while I enjoyed Ruby Gillman Teenage Kraken as it was, I'm also writing an outline for an alternate, highly self indulgent version of it.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Rooting for Ruby at the Box Office

The projections for the new DreamWorks picture have been shockingly low. Like, $7-8m for the three-day. That's an opening on par with SPIRIT UNTAMED, which lost money at the box office, as did BOSS BABY: FAMILY BUSINESS. Those both debuted in summer 2021, and Universal/DreamWorks wisely took those on the chin because most families weren't ready to head back to the flicks to see those, plus SPIRIT had a more limited audience anyways and didn't cost much.

RUBY GILLMAN, TEENAGE KRAKEN, as I expected, cost in the sub-$100m region. $70m to be exact...

I get that Universal has MARIO to promote in the first quarter of the year, and a lot of Oscar buzzing to do for THE LAST WISH, buuuuut... I think they *could've* at least **announced** RUBY GILLMAN officially to the world before its triple unveiling/poster/trailer drop back in March. All we animation fans had were small scooper sites and hints here and there, concept art leaks, DreamWorks animators having a "MEET THE GILLMANS" on their resumes a year in advance... This was literally announced, revealed to be a thing... Officially... Just 3 1/2 months before release. I figured, hey, they'll marathon-run this thing like they did with THE BAD GUYS. That $80m-costing picture had good legs (and less competition), and made $250m worldwide...

RUBY GILLMAN would have to make 2.5x its budget to break even, approximately $175m... Thankfully not steep of a number, compared to what ELEMENTAL has to strive for, but still...

Others have decried Universal releasing it so close to ELEMENTAL and SPIDER-VERSE, and on the same day as INDIANA JONES 5. Christopher Nolan apparently had enough leverage to make Universal *not* release anything too close to his OPPENHEIMER, before or after... Which tips my love/hate thing for Nolan closer to hate. Okay, not that strong of a word, but you know what I mean, right? Honestly, RUBY GILLMAN would've worked better as a mid-July release... Sometime between ELEMENTAL and MUTANT MAYHEM, ya know? Maybe BARBIE to compete with, too. Or, a late August/early September release. DreamWorks was no stranger to that with ABOMINABLE back in 2019, for example.

Either way, I hope the picture co-exists fine with everything else and has good legs. The 4th of July weekend should give it a better start than its 3-day, and if audiences say "yes" to it like they are with low-opening ELEMENTAL... Well, fingers crossed. It would suck to see a DreamWorks original flop like that. Until the day the industry realizes how absurd box office has become, I'm still going to root for animated pictures to make their money back at the box office.

Some say it's possible that it'll be like PUSS IN BOOTS and have ginormous legs, cat claws if you will. But... I don't see that, PUSS was something special that really took audiences by surprise. At the the movie theater I work at, I saw the screenings consistently get PACKED with people... Like, a month after its extremely soft opening. I saw PUSS the day after release day. December 22nd... There were maybe 5-6 other people in the theater? By early April... Still PACKED... That was a special record-breaking run few films can replicate...

I think RUBY GILLMAN pulls a good multiplier. Say it opens, 3-day, with $7m... To lowball... Then the 4th of July frame boosts it a bit. It's past $15m by the end of the week. I think it goes above $30-40m at least, domestically... Which isn't great... Maybe it goes even higher. We shall see. It all depends on how it plays worldwide, too. THE BAD GUYS made $96m here, $152m overseas for a grand total of $250m worldwide... Who knows, maybe colorful sea creatures will play better worldwide than L.A.-livin' heist criminal cartoon animals.

And if it loses? Again, it wouldn't seem to be too much of a write-down. Not a crushing loss, like, say LIGHTYEAR was for Pixar last year.