A month after the recent financial disaster that was Arctic Dogs, no one expected another animated film from this year to flop harder than that film. Yet, it just so happened that The Playmobil Movie surpassed not only Arctic Dogs’ infamous box office record, but a couple of other ones as well. Playmobil opened in about 2,337 theaters in the U.S. and made about $656,500, making it a financial failure at the box office.
Not only did the film do worse than Arctic Dogs in terms of box office gross, but it’s now listed as one of the biggest box office bombs in general, alongside films like Delgo ($511,920) and The Oogieloves ($443,901). Many factors cater into Playmobil‘s abysmal financial performance, as the film wasn’t heavily advertised and saw constant delays, initially set to release in January, then both April and August until finally setting on a December release date. In a last ditch attempt to boost sales, STX Entertainment made it so theaters would sell tickets for the film at a low price of five dollars compared to the average ten dollar price for a typical movie ticket. Add in stiff competition from Frozen 2 being a massive success even in its third week, and it’s clear that Playmobil was going to have a rough time being financially profitable.
Although audiences were clearly not interested in the film, citing it as a “LEGO Movie knock off”, it’s still a terrible lost for STX Animation. The film didn’t even making one million dollars on its opening weekend and, to make matters worse, cost about $75 million to make. Considering that STX’s other attempt at an animated film from this year, Ugly Dolls, also underperformed financially, it seems very unlikely that they’ll produce more animated films in the future.
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