Sep 26, 2019

"Abominable" is set to become the largest US opening for the original animated film in 2019

Universal Pictures, the parent company of Dreamworks Animation, will launch Abominable in U.S. theaters tomorrow. The $75 million film is Dreamworks' first collaboration with China's Pearl Studio.

Analysts are projecting a no. 1 domestic opening weekend of $17–$20 million, which though low for a Dreamworks title, would still be the biggest opening for an original animated feature in the U.S. this year. The current high opening for original animation is Paramount's Wonder Park, which launched with $15.8 million last March.

Ahead of the release, Universal is spending big money to promote it. In the week running September 16–22, the cg family feature topped ad spending across tv networks in the U.S., with a spend of $5.97 million. Ads for the film were aired 1,543 times, garnering 376,152,023 impressions; Dreamworks prioritized spending on Fox, Nick, and NBC. The data comes from iSpot.tv, a tv ad measurement and attribution company, in partnership with Variety.

Abominable outspent the likes of The Addams Family ($4.19 million) and Ad Astra ($4.09 million). Significantly, though, Abominable's ads registered the worst attention index in the top five, meaning that they were most often interrupted by viewers.

Echoing recent releases like Warner Animation's Smallfoot and Laika's Missing Link, Abominable tells the story of a yeti displaced from his habitat. When young Yi finds the creature on the roof of her Shanghai home, she names him Everest and resolves to reunite him with his family in the Himalayas. Cue an epic journey across China.

The film is a U.S./China co-production between Dreamworks and Pearl Studio, which started life as Oriental Dreamworks. In 2018, China's CMC Capital Partners took full ownership of the studio, and relaunched it. Abominable is its first feature; it is working with an array of partners on forthcoming films, such as Glen Keane's feature directorial debut Over the Moon, which is being produced for Netflix and animated at Sony Pictures Imageworks.

Last year, Pearl's chief creative officer Peilin Chou told Cartoon Brew that Abominable marks “the first time a major global animated film will be set in modern-day China, and will feature modern-day Chinese teenagers.” This reflects the studio's general pitch: it is positioning itself as a prestige production company with a special insight into the Chinese market, where animation is enjoying something of a boom.

Jill Culton, who previously co-directed Sony Picture Animation's Open Season, is the writer and director behind Abominable, with Todd Wilderman (head of story on Dreamworks's Home) serving as co-director. The producers are Suzanne Buirgy (Kung Fu Panda 2, Home) for Dreamworks, and Chou on behalf of Pearl Studio. Tim Johnson, Frank Zhu, and Li Ruigang are executive producing.

Reviews so far have been broadly positive, netting the film an 78% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes. Here are some takes:

Kate Erbland at Indiewire gave the film a B- score:

Over at The Hollywood Reporter, Jordan Mintzer identified one of the film's main selling points:

Variety's Amy Nicholson was a little less enthusiastic:

Peter Travers in Rolling Stone found things to appreciate, but felt that the film didn't live up to its full potential: