Outrageous!

This movie recently had the most spending by a studio on ads for a week, from Variety. It is no surprise that most of the ads were on Nickelodeon, one of the producers of Wonder Park. Also, there is an Atom Tickets deal being promoted on Amazon, to help parents with kids who may want to see this film, with a "Buy an adult ticket, get a child's ticket free" promotion. I'm skeptical the promotional efforts will help this film though, as Nickelodeon Movies will probably have better luck next year with Spongebob 3.

Many here forget recent history. Just look what happened to Power Rangers in March. Its existing fans were the first ones to see it opening weekend, but quickly fell off after that. Many of these movies end up getting mostly the audience that already exists for them, without any sign of expanding the audience further. There was quite a bit of talk about PR on social media in the days before release too. My Little Pony's audience is much more limited than some of the more popular cartoons out there. MLP's TV show exists on a higher tier cable channel that some cable providers may not even offer, Discovery Family. It's a huge advantage for competitors like Nickelodeon that has Spongebob Squarepants airing on a regular basis, making promoting their own movies like Sponge Out of Water much easier. Thus, some may not have seen an MLP episode on a regular basis in years. MLP appears to be following PR's box office more closely instead of that for a typical animated movie. I am doubtful that just because of its lack of competition means MLP will hold well. After all, it is the fall TV season, and there are new cartoons airing on TV right now.

Similar to another movie topic where I was posting regularly in it like you did for this movie, MLP is behaving similarly to Power Rangers. Although Scott Mendelson from Forbes has already suggested no MLP theatrical sequel already as of today. It took him a few weeks to do that for PR. And like PR, there were regular updates in its topic before release suggesting fans were hopeful for a good opening weekend and good multiplier. And just like PR, it appears the existing fan base was most of the opening weekend's audience. If it continues to behave like Lionsgate's release from earlier this year, those of you hoping for a good long run for MLP are very likely to be disappointed by the second weekend drop. I was surprised by the "-" part after the "A." Usually, I would expect the opening day audience, which are mostly existing fans, to just give the movie an "A" Cinemascore.

I'm skeptical MLP can get to $10 million. Its opening days are fan driven, and when compared to most animated movies, MLP skews much more heavily towards a girl audience, and mostly excludes a boy audience. Most other animated films would try to bring in an equal amount of boys and girls if possible. That means quick drop offs in its opening days and in its second weekend are likely for MLP, when compared to the box office numbers of recent animated films.

I checked the theater count for Leap: 2,575, which I found very surprising that Weinstein would open a movie like that in so many theaters. Whether because of contracts or not, it should find a spot somewhere on the chart for Worst Opening Weekend for a "Saturated" movie release (2,500+ theaters). This weekend seems similar to those that typically appear in late October. Late August and late October are among the times of the year when we get the very low opening weekend numbers.

Some Sinclair channels on broadcast TV are showing Miraculous Ladybug on weekday mornings as part of a morning block called Kids Click. It just started at the beginning of this month. What I see in common between the three properties, besides being TV shows, is that they each have a vocal online fandom. Maybe Lionsgate wants movies with existing vocal fan bases to make it easier to promote them? However, other franchise properties don't get talked about as much, yet have strong box office runs when new movies appear.

$10 million sounds impossible after the opening weekend Power Rangers had in Japan: https://twitter.com/GMANonScified/status/886630447442264064 Even considering that Super Sentai movies typically don't open #1 in Japan, that still sounds very, very low for PR at $575,000. It has to be a major disappointment for Toei, since they co-own the Power Rangers property with Saban Brands.

https://twitter.com/DisneyXD/status/886378682100699137 I like the 2D art style for the Big Hero 6 animated series. Using 3D for this would have been a steep downgrade from the movie. One of the big things a TV series can do that a sequel movie cannot is seen at 0:21, as Hiro appears to show off a rogues gallery of villains.

I wish Disney had not given up on Disney Infinity so easily. This movie would have easily given the figures used in that game a story to connect them. Also, it is worth remembering that 4 of the 6 main voice actors of Big Hero 6 are reprising their roles for the upcoming Disney XD series. So, it is possible that we could see Baymax in some form in WIR2.

I guess 2D animation, or the 2D animation style at least, has gone to television. The upcoming Ducktales reboot, Tangled: The Series, Big Hero 6: The Series, The Loud House, and the next Ninja Turtles series, are all in the 2D style. A 2D movie of a popular 2D animated series may be one of the very few ways we will see studios want to put 2D animated movies in theaters. Recently, Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner said this to The Hollywood Reporter: I can't see how the MLP movie is going to get a similar percentage to that for its box office run. There is a strong possibility of the movie having a front loaded opening weekend, and add in that Friendship is Magic is almost 7 years old, in an industry where two years can be considered to be a long time for an animated series like MLP. I do think this will be available on digital and Blu-ray by Christmas. It would make no sense to me for Hasbro and Lionsgate to wait until after Christmas to release this.

Variety said that Power Rangers was #1 on the video sales and rentals chart last week. However, it is worth noting what is being discussed in this weekend's box office topic right now: PR's numbers in Portugal were awful. That could be the biggest obstacle to getting a sequel green lit: international partners are going to be very reluctant to work with Lionsgate now, and are not likely to agree to the same terms for the production costs as this movie was made for.

Speaking of Power Rangers, remember a couple of weeks ago when Dean Israelite said to Screen Rant that a PG-13 rating hurt PR's box office? Well, this weekend shows it is probably not the PG-13 rating that kept PR's box office low, because a PG-13 rated Spider-man movie is likely to make triple the opening weekend of Power Rangers at the domestic box office, and the Spider-man movies are considered family friendly.

Is Adi Shankar going to direct? Power Rangers fans know his name well, because of his dark "fan film" about that property that ended up with Saban Brands trying to take down his fan film before being required to put an unofficial disclaimer on it. Hasbro, being a competitor to companies like Saban, and knowing what they went through, is unlikely to approve a grimdark Transformers, because like PR, toy sales are a huge component of the success of the Transformers over the years. They need to keep the yearly toy sales steady.

The movie's pace is usually mentioned as its biggest problem. The PG-13 rating doesn't help explain why there was a 65% second weekend drop, followed by 3 more weeks of over 50% drops after that. Other PG-13 rated movies have had no problems with holds from week-to-week, yet this one had a difficult time. Considering how well the Avengers and the rest of the MCU movies tickets sell, with all of them being rated PG-13, it's hard to believe there would have been much difference between PG and PG-13.

Dean Israelite is now blaming the PG-13 rating for the box office run of Power Rangers at Screen Rant. He believed it could have made more if it was PG. Of course, consider that it was flop internationally too, where they use other systems than the U.S. rating system.