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https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/sorry-disney-super-mario-bros-225714234.html

Sorry, Disney: Super Mario Bros. Could Cement Universal as the New King of Animation Box Office

Easter weekend will see the arrival of one of the most hotly anticipated films of the year, Universal/Illuminations The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which should easily earn the best opening weekend ever for a video game adaptation. And in doing so, it will cement Universal as the new king of animation after years of dominance by Disney.

In an effort to take advantage of the holiday and overwhelming pre-release buzz, Universal is releasing this adaptation of the world-famous Nintendo series on Wednesday. Pre-release tracking is predicting a five-day opening of $125 million while Universals projection is a tad lower at $110 million. Independent projections for the Friday-Sunday period are starting at $75 million, which would top the video game adaptation record set last year by Sonic the Hedgehog 2 with $72.1 million.

Reviews have been quite tepid with an early Rotten Tomatoes score of 46%. But at least on opening weekend, the critics takes will bounce off this film like bullets off Bowsers spiked shell. For families and gamers, the movies myriad references to Marios long history of games should be more than enough to send them out of theaters gushing this weekend and set up Super Mario Bros. to become one of the highest-grossing films of the year.

In the process, Universal will notch another animation victory in what has been a very fruitful post-closure run for its two animation studios, Illumination and DreamWorks. While Disney and Pixar were struggling at the box office last year with Lightyear and Strange World, Illumination scored one of last summers biggest hits with Minions: The Rise of Gru, which grossed $936 million globally to become the highest-grossing animated movie since Frozen II in November 2019...

https://news.yahoo.com/pixar-had-lot-soul-searching-144335651.html

Pixar Had to Do a Lot of Soul-Searching After Lightyear Flopped at Box Office

Pixar and box office flop are usually not put together in the same sentence. Yet, the lows of Lightyear went to infinity and beyond it seemed.

After the Toy Story spin-off animated feature underperformed in theaters (and even saw some cineplexes fast-forward a same-sex kiss when showing the film), Pixars Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter addressed what went wrong with Lightyear, which starred Chris Evans as the real astronaut Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on. The film received mixed reviews and ultimately lacked the signature Pixar spark drawing audiences in.

Weve done a lot of soul-searching about that because we all love the movie. We love the characters and the premise, Docter told The Wrap. I think probably what weve ended on in terms of what went wrong is that we asked too much of the audience. When they hear Buzz, theyre like, Great, wheres Mr. Potato Head and Woody and Rex? And then we drop them into this science fiction film that theyre like, What?'

Docter continued, Even if theyve read the material in press, it was just a little too distant, both in concept, and I think in the way that characters were drawn, that they were portrayed it was much more of a science fiction. And [director] Angus [MacLane], to his credit, took it very seriously and genuinely and wanted to represent those characters as real characters. But the characters in Toy Story are much broader, and so I think there was a disconnect between what people wanted, expected and what we were giving to them.

He added, Look, its great to go back and explore these worlds and these characters, but you want to have a reason, some kind of compelling reason, that youre making the movie.

Lead star Evans previously admitted it was tough stepping into an iteration of Buzz Lightyear for the prequel film, following Tim Allens iconic turn as the toy version.

The first time you have to do that iconic line, To infinity and beyond, you just kind of do a shameless Tim Allen impression, because its intimidating, Evans said.

The actor also addressed Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait banning the films release due to gay themes. A kiss between two lesbian characters was originally cut from the film and later reinstated amid the Dont Say Gay bill-backing backlash toward Disney...