The box office results are in for LAIKA’s latest endeavor. The Boxtrolls, despite opening in third behind The Maze Runner and The Equalizer, has met box-office expectations with an opening weekend total of $17 million. Combined with an early overseas gross of $17 million, that brings its worldwide total to $35 million.
With this news, The Boxtrolls continues what so far seems to be a recognizable pattern with LAIKA’s films placing third at the box office. This time, however, all signs appear to be in favor of The Boxtrolls having a good, lengthy run come October. Its previous film, ParaNorman, fell short of its $60 million budget both domestically and internationally, even though it came out to a combined total of a modest $107 million worldwide. Among the factors that could help The Boxtrolls are repeated kid viewership, a strong female turnout (57% according to Jim Orr, the distribution president for Focus Features), its relatively clear window (several weeks until the October 17 release of The Book of Life), and of course its overseas performance.
It also helps that the reviews now lean in a more positive direction than when we last covered it. The Boxtrolls now has a rating of 72% on Rotten Tomatoes, its critics consensus stating: “While it’s far from Laika’s best offering, The Boxtrolls is still packed with enough offbeat wit and visual splendor to offer a healthy dose of all-ages entertainment.”
Granted, the reviews are more mixed than LAIKA’s previous offerings (note that a 72% is a tad lower than the 90% and 87% rating of Coraline and ParaNorman, respectively). Whether that will have any future effect on the film’s box-office performance remains to be seen, but the fact of the matter remains that The Boxtrolls has indeed gotten off to a decent start and has, for now, a good fighting chance.
The Boxtrolls is now in theaters everywhere. Don’t forget to check out the review on here!
