Dreamworks poised to approve ‘Croods’ sequel as worldwide box office nears $400 million
DreamWorks animation is expected to announce its animated caveman sequel at CinemaCon.
Deadline says the studio will quickly move forward with the sequel after the flop Rise of the Guardians. The Croods earned over $13 million this last weekend, pushing the US total box office over $142 and the worldwide gross to $387 million.
Guardians, in sharp contrast, only earned $103.4 million in the US and $303.7 worldwide with a budget of $145 million. The losses were noted in February as part of the awful company report.
DreamWorks also said that it was laying off 350 employees, confirming what the Animation Guild, the animators’ union, anticipated and informed KPCC of earlier this month (although at the time the official number wasn’t final). With a staff of 2,200, that’s almost 16 percent of studio’s workforce.
CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg told the Hollywood Reporter that the layoffs, the first in the company’s history, were “very, very difficult.”
The culprit for the disappointing financials is “Rise of the Guardians,” DreamWorks big 2012 release, which did not perform well at the box office and set off a ripple effect for future productions. This is from the company’s statement:
Impacting DreamWorks Animation’s fourth quarter and full-year 2012 results is a charge of approximately $165 million, which includes a write-down of film costs for Rise of the Guardians in the amount of $87 million, charges totaling $54 million related to the Company’s decision to return Me & My Shadow back to development, a write-off of a number of other development projects in the amount of $20 million and a charge of $4.6 million related to restructuring activities.
“While Rise of the Guardians did not achieve the level of box office success that we have come to expect from a DreamWorks Animation film, we have made several changes to our future slate that we believe will position us well for the next two years,” [Katzenberg] said.
Croods was the first film in DWA’s new distribution deal with Fox, which hosts its CinemaCon panel Thursday.
Box Office totals: http://www.boxofficemojo.com