A new animated film featuring the voice of Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis broke a huge 2024 box office record with his dismal opening weekend. The year saw the debut of some big animated hits in theaters, including the sequels Panda Kung Fu 4 ($549.1 million worldwide) and Despicable Me 4 ($965.2 million). Furthermore, the Pixar film Inside Out 2 grossed $1.696 billion, not only becoming the #1 film of the year so far, but also the highest-grossing animated film of all time.
However, 2024’s animated films have largely continued a recent trend of debuting with low to medium opening weekends and then becoming sleeper hits. This includes The Wild Robotwhich attracted Oscar attention as its release, which debuted with $35.7 million, slowly climbed past $200 million worldwide and counting. Similarly, The movie Garfield it only opened to $24 million but achieved a global gross of $257.2 million. Despite this, Sudeikis’ new film doesn’t seem destined to reach that level, given its disappointing debut.
Hitpig! Broke a dismal box office record
Its opening weekend is dangerously low
Hitpig! broke a huge box office record with its dismal opening weekend. The film, which was co-written by Berkeley Breathed and inspired by his 2008 children’s book Pete and picklestars Sudeikis in the title role as a bounty hunting pig who goes on an adventure in Las Vegas with the elephant Pickles (Lilly Singh). The voice cast also includes Rainn Wilson, Anitta, RuPaul, Hannah Gadsby and Charlie Adler. Hitpig! The reviews were average, reaching a score of just 61% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Put Deadlinefrom Saturday morning, Hitpig! is projected to gross a total of $945,000 in its three-day opening weekend at the domestic box office. VarietyThe report differs, showing that it grossed just over $1 million in its debut in 2,000 theaters. However, either total reflects that the film will earn the lowest-grossing domestic opening weekend of the year for any wide-release animated film. Below, see a breakdown of how the film compares to other 2024 domestic release animated titles that grossed less than $10 million from more than 1,500 theaters.
|
Title |
Theaters |
Opening weekend |
|---|---|---|
|
Hitpig! |
~2,000 |
~$1 million |
|
My Hero Academia: You’re Next |
1,845 |
US$3 million |
|
Piece by piece |
1,865 |
US$3.8 million |
|
Spy x Family Code: White |
2009 |
US$4.8 million |
The film also compared poorly to most 2024 animated re-releasesalthough re-releases are notoriously fickle at the box office and typically play in fewer theaters. Hitpig! was largely surpassed by LAIKA’s album debut Coraline ($9.8 million in 1,535 theaters) and doesn’t even match The Nightmare Before Christmas ($2.4 million in 1,700 theaters) or Shrek 2 ($1.4 million in 1,512 theaters), although it surpassed Turning red ($578,000 in 1,560 theaters) and nearly matched 1994 The Lion King ($1.055 million in 1,330 theaters).
Our opinion on Hitpig! Opening weekend
The film’s problems may not be over
Although it is possible that the box office of Hitpig! could grow as its rollout continues throughout November, that prospect seems unlikely. It appears to have suffered due to the lack of a major publicity push, and public reactions so far show that likely won’t become a word-of-mouth success. Put DeadlinePostTrak shows that only 46% of the audience surveyed shared a positive reaction to the film, which could spell doom for the already struggling project.