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Top Animated Films Of All Time

March 4, 2012 by · Comments Off on Top Animated Films Of All Time 

Top Animated Films Of All Time, Combining a strong brand and an impressive marketing effort, The Lorax crushed even the wildest expectations with one of the best opening weekends ever for an animated movie. Project X also had a respectable debut on a weekend where the Top 12 grossed an estimated $153.5 million, which is up 27 percent from the same frame last year.

Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax opened to $70.7 million, which is by far the best opening of the year. It’s also the sixth-highest debut ever for an animated movie and second-best for a non-sequel behind The Simpsons Movie ($74.04 million). Among March openings, it ranks third all-time behind Alice in Wonderland ($116.1 million) and 300 ($70.9 million). It also topped Illumination Entertainment’s Despicable Me ($56.4 million), and scored the best opening ever for a Dr. Seuss movie ahead of How the Grinch Stole Christmas ($55.1 million) (the Grinch did sell more tickets, though).

It’s not really hyperbole to say that Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment knocked this one out of the park. For the production itself, they opted to keep the look and feel of a Dr. Seuss work while mixing in some slightly off-kilter humor, and then they hired recognizable, distinct vocal talent like Danny DeVito, Taylor Swift and Betty White to bring the characters to life. Aside from highlighting these features throughout the marketing campaign, there was an aggressive cross-promotional effort with a number of organizations including IHOP and Mazda (which obviously runs contrary to The Lorax’s environmentalist, anti-corporate message, but I digress). The title character even made an appearance as a “guest judge” on NBC’s The Voice, which reinforces the advantages of having a TV network at your disposal.

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