NEW YORK — Francis Ford Coppola's decades-in-the-making, self-financed epic ''Megalopolis'' flopped with moviegoers, while the acclaimed DreamWorks Animation family film ''The Wild Robot'' soared to No. 1 at the weekend box office.
''The Wild Robot,'' Chris Sanders' adaptation of Peter Brown's bestseller, outperformed expectations to launch with $35 million in ticket sales in U.S. and Canada theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday. ''Wild Robot'' was poised to do well after critics raved about the story of a shipwrecked robot who raises an orphan gosling. Audiences agreed, giving the film an A CinemaScore. ''Wild Robot'' is likely set up a long and lucrative run for the Universal Pictures release.
Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore, predicts ''The Wild Robot'' ''may take a page from the ‘Elemental' playbook by opening to respectable box office and then looking toward long-term playability.'' Pixar's ''Elemental," which like ''The Wild Robot" wasn't a sequel, debuted with a modest $30 million but went on to gross nearly $500 million worldwide.
Family movies, led by the year's biggest hit in ''Inside Out 2,'' have particularly powered the box office this year. David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment, said the genre should reach $6 billion worldwide in 2024 — which, he noted, "is back to pre-pandemic levels.''
''Megalopolis,'' Coppola's vision of a Roman epic set in modern-day New York, was never expected to perform close to that level. But the film's $4 million debut was still sobering for a movie that Coppola bankrolled himself for $120 million. Following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, critics have been mixed on Coppola's first film in 13 years. Audiences gave in a D+ CinemaScore.
By any financial measure, ''Megalopolis'' was a mega-flop. But from the start, the 85-year-old Coppola maintained money wasn't his concern. Coppola fashioned the film, which he first began developing in the late 1970s, as a grand personal statement about human possibility.
''Everyone's so worried about money,'' Coppola told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of the film's release. ''I say: Give me less money and give me more friends.''
Studios passed on ''Megalopolis'' after Cannes. Lionsgate ultimately stepped forward to distribute it, for a fee. Coppola also picked up the tab for most of its $15 million in marketing costs. The film, which stars Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel and Aubrey Plaza, also played in about 200 IMAX locations, which accounted for $1.8 million of its ticket sales.
