Playmobil: The Movie just had one of the worst box office opening weekends in movie history. STX Films and On Animation’s cinematic adaptation of the Germany-based Lego-style toy-line hit American theaters on Friday to near-universal derision, and now the film’s naysayers have box office proof to back their arguments up.
Directed by former Disney animator Lino DiSalvo, the movie features the voices of Daniel Radcliff (Harry Potter), Anya Taylor-Joy (Split), and Gabriel Bateman (Child’s Play), as well as stand-up comic Jim Gaffigan. The plot involves a girl and her brother (Taylor-Joy and Bateman) being transported to the world of Playmobil, where they run into a super-spy named Rex Dasher (Radcliff) and get swept up in a grand adventure to save the plastic inhabitants of the land from the evil Emperor Maximus (American Idol alumni Adam Lambert). Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson and country music star Meghan Trainor also lend their voices to the film, which was first released in France earlier this year in August before reaching the United States this weekend.
Exhibitor Relations Co. has reported the opening weekend numbers for the movie on their Twitter page, and they’re abysmal. The film only scored $670 thousand across 2,337 theaters nationwide, and that’s with a budget of $40 million. ERC called the results “disastrous,” and joked that this turnout is terrible news “for K’NEX: THE MOVIE, LINCOLN LOGS: THE MOVIE and PICK-UP STIX: THE MOVIE.”
Despite some slight praise for the voice acting performances, critics have panned the movie for its formulaic plot, inconstant world building, and the overall feeling it was made purely to promote the toy-line and leech off the success of the recent Lego films. It doesn’t help that Playmobil is a lesser-known commodity in the states, or that the movie was released mere weeks removed from Disney’s highly-anticipated Frozen 2, which continues to dominate the box office.
From the looks of things, it’s safe to deem Playmobil: The Movie a flop both critically and financially. The movie has already gotten off to a horrible start, and given the bad word-of-mouth and the upcoming arrival of another highly-anticipated Disney film, Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, which will likely scoop up the remaining box office revenue in two weeks, it doesn’t seem like Playmobil will recover. Maybe someday a smaller toy-based franchise will recapture the magic of 2014’s hit The Lego Movie and its follow-ups, but it won’t be Playmobil, although the film did secure itself a spot among the biggest bombs in history, which is an “honor” most movies fall short of achieving.
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Source: Twitter
