The future of stop motion animation

When it comes to films, one of the aspects that I find most fascinating is the box office. The Box office is so important to the life of a film and can determine the likely hood of the film getting many different sequels. 
But when it comes to stop motion animation, could the box office determine whether or not these films continue to be made. One of my personal favorite films of all time are both The Corpse Bride (2005)and Coraline (2009). Two great stop motion animation films but I worry that these films are quite underappreciated. 
Again, I want to look at the box office numbers, and this time I do not want to compare these films to other 3D animated films. In this comparison I want to stick to some of the most popular stop motion animations that have had a wide release.
Lets start with The Corpse Bride which only made 117.2 million in the US in 2005. We then jump to Coraline in 2009, which made 124.6 million in the US. In 2012 we had two films battle it out in the form of ParaNorman which made 107.1 million US and Frankenweenie which only made 81.5 million US. The Boxtrolls (2014) made 109.3 million US. With the exception of Frankenweenie, There seems to be more or less consistent numbers in the triple digest for stop motion animation films at this time. Frankenweenie might have suffered from being releases a couple months after ParaNorman and having a similar plots. But what happened next? 
Kubo and the Two Strings later came out in 2016 and it only made 77.5 million. And earlier this year, West Anderson’s Isle of Dogs only made 64.2 million. Recently these films seem to have taken a hit in the box office but why? The quality of these films is undeniable. Most of the films in this list have been academy nominated films with outstanding reviews? So why are these films falling short at the box office? Is the animation too daunting for kids? Is the population that go see them is too narrow? 
I personally don’t know but its sad to see these films get brushed under the carpet and see Cars 3 make more money. I just hope that some studios continue to overlook the box office numbers and continue to take chances on these kinds of films. Stop motion animation is such a unique and exquisite form of art that it would be sad to see studios abandon it.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 4, 2018 at 11:48 PM

    I agree, stop-motion films should be continually created even if they aren't exactly breaking the box office. Stop-motion features just add an interesting texture to the animation genre, in terms of both the way they look and the narratives they are able to tell, and provide a nice contrast to the majority of children's/family animation films released. Thankfully, Laika Studios (Coraline, Boxtrolls, etc) are currently working on their next film Missing Link which will hopefully be released next year.

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