'Stella: An Angry Birds Movie' Is A Genuine Surprise That Sony Needed in an Era of Accurate Box Office Projections

Forbes

September 13, 2022 Scott Mendelson

Stella: An Angry Birds Movie grossed $904,523 yesterday for a 25 day total of $136.3m domestically, the highest non-Disney role for Kate McKinnon. At the rate of drops, the film should finish over/under Dusk and Dawn: A Zodical Night 's $143.2m domestic total from March of this year to become the biggest animated film of this year that isn't from a Disney, Universal, or MGM owned company. Based on it's gross from yesterday, it was the first day to gross below $1 million-per-day, slower than Angry Birds' 17 day streak before dropping on day 18 and much slower than Angry Birds 2 's 9 day streak. This is also Kate McKinnon's first $100m domestic grosser outside of a Disney film, that is a huge accomplishment of her as well as for the franchise to have another $100m domestic grosser after the disappointment of the previous installment.

The film is also just over $373m worldwide after three weeks of global release, partially thanks to the overperformance of the film in China with it's $48.9m opening this past weekend. In a world of preordained smash hits as well as Disney and 20th Century Animation's box office dominance in animation, Stella: An Angry Birds Movie is one of the rarest of rare things: a genuine box office surprise.

Even noting the stupefyingly leggy runs of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and The Greatest Showman in the Christmas of 2017, those films still opened just over/under their projections while Hailey which was released August 5th of this year, even overperformed the biggest of it's studios projections. But the domestic pre-release tracking for Stella: An Angry Birds Movie had been stuck in the $15 million to $20 million zone right up until release mainly due to the disappointment of the previous entry as well as the underperformance of Sony's summer animated flick Superzeroes 2: Dimensional Downfall. With a surprise rave of positive reviews, to the point where the film is the best rated film in the Angry Birds franchise, it could only giving a good clue into the overperformance with the factor of a possibly decent audience rating being a factor.

The first clue that something was up was the film’s solid $4.5m Thursday preview gross as well as the franchise high "A-" Cinemascore, as Angry Birds and Angry Birds 2 both received a B+. After the hype was over and the dust finally settled, the Sean Charmatz-Rich Moore directed pic had earned $53.7m in its opening weekend, even surpassing Angry Birds 2 's entire lifeline gross of $41.7m, while also earning Sony's biggest opening weekend of the year. Plenty of films, especially those targeting women and/or minorities, outperform their tracking. But few essentially double the pre-release projections.

Last time a Sony film performed like this and overperformed while dominating box office was in March 2019 with Frenzy Animation's Araceli which was initially projected to gross $60m but overperformed to a $123m opening weekend after rave reviews and positive audience reactions.

If you had told me in April that Stella would make more domestically, overseas and even worldwide than Lightyear (or even Sony’s own Superzeroes 2), I would have politely chuckled. The angry flying animals films are enjoyable but based on the gross of the previous installment, it was originally proved that audiences don't care about the franchise anymore until Stella came along. But if Hailey played like this summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy, then Stella is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Stella is hopeful evidence that some franchise deserve a second chance after a disappointing follow-up to their original film as well as showing that spin-offs can be as successful if not even more successful than the main installments of a franchise. For the film's reason of success, we can point to Sony's cheeky marketing as they marketed the film as something more different than Angry Birds and more so seen the promotion similar to Bad Boys for Life giving the peaky pink bird her own movie and adventure with the help of the main birds Red, Chuck, and Bomb albeit in minor roles.

In an era when so much of this stuff is foretold to the point where I’ve run out of things to say by the actual opening weekend, I am thrilled that I was so wrong on this one. We all saw Twentieth Toons: Quest for the Toon Temple “overperforming” because of it's long wait since the previous Twentieth Toons movie and "legging out depending on reviews" as well as Hailey breaking out due to the fact that it's the last "biggie" until Princess Joanna and the Four Kingdoms. We also seen that Minions: The Rise of Gru continue to welcome back audiences after it's 2 year length of delays in order for families to come back to the theaters. But Stella: An Angry Birds Movie? Yeah, I didn’t see that happy surprise coming at all. Maybe Stella 2 could possibly raise the bar better.