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

Forbes

September 13, 2022

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'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. With a surprise rave of positive reviews, to the point where the film is the best rated film in the Angry Birds franchise, it was leaning towards a more positive box office.

The first clue that something was up was the film’s solid $4.5m Thursday preview gross as well as the high "A-" Cinemascore. 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. Plenty of films, especially those targeting women and/or minorities, outperform their tracking. But few essentially double the pre-release projections.

More coming soon!