2023's Animated Movies Proved The Box Office Isn't Everything

How does one define success? This question has been a favorite of hiring managers and Miss America interview prep coaches for decades, and it's because you can glean a lot about a person's perspective and values based on their answer. When it comes to the world of film, there are typically two pathways to determine success: critical and financial. But even then, it's still an imperfect metric that disregards the longevity and importance of cult films or films that find success through the avenue of historical impact.

Looking at the cinematic landscape of 2023, no other medium exemplified this better than animated feature films. Sure, "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" was a massive success at the box office, but the film's value extends far beyond a studio's bottom line. The Pixar flick "Elemental" was thought to be a massive flop, but its financial growth was a reminder that opening weekend performance doesn't necessarily dictate whether or not a film will find its audience.

"It's so hard to quantify what makes a successful film these days," said Seth Rogen during an animation roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter. "['Ninja Turtles' has] made, what, $100 million domestically in box office, and sold $1 billion worth of toys." Rogen served as a co-screenwriter, producer, and voiceover performer on "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem," so he's had a front-row seat to the film's various pathways toward success. And the folks behind some of 2023's best animated feature films agreed with Rogen's point — the box office isn't everything, not by a long shot.

The roundtable didn't include a representative from "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," which was not only the second highest-grossing film of 2023 but also came out within the same year as the "Super Mario Bros. Wonder" video game and the opening of Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Hollywood. There's no telling how much the success of all three influenced one another's profit margins. "People like to latch on to trends, and try to point out little trends. None of them hold up," said Rogen. "They'll all be like, 'Everyone's saying that family films aren't great and they're not doing well,' then 'Spider-Verse' makes a billion dollars [sic], and everyone says, 'No one wants a female-led comedy,' and then 'Barbie' makes a billion dollars."

There's an endless discussion about Hollywood learning the wrong lessons from previous successes, which makes predicting trends a fleeting errand. "People like good movies. People like to be a part of a cultural conversation," Rogen explained. "If everyone's talking about something, they want to talk about it, too. If they see something they relate to, if they see something that is exciting, they go see it. Good movies prevail, period." Peter Sohn, the director of "Elemental," wholeheartedly agreed, pointing out that when his film looked like it was heading toward flopping, it made it seem as if the film had underperformed. But then once word-of-mouth praise started spreading, he was able to see how the film was resonating with people on a deep level. "It's that idea that audiences are connecting to a film," Sohn said. "The idea of it being in a theater, or being in streaming, or in someone's pocket, in their iPhone — you're working your ass off, and putting all your heart into this stuff, so that it could one day chemically reach out to an audience member and spark something."

"Elemental" and "Mutant Mayhem" may not share many visual similarities, but they're both films about familial obligation and trying to find your "people" in a world that is actively hostile toward you. It's no wonder both films resonated so deeply with so many.

The distribution landscape has also changed wildly in recent years, where films with streaming distribution bypass the box office altogether. For "Nimona" producer Karen Ryan, it was a huge change in expectation. Originally intended for a theatrical release, the project pivoted to streaming once Netflix came on board. "But 'Nimona' has LGBTQ+ characters, we have a gay relationship, and if we went theatrical, there are markets that would not screen our movie," Ryan said. "[For Netflix], we got to make this movie and not compromise any of that. We made it authentic and true to what we wanted and our movie went to 190 countries at once and people got to choose to see it."

I was very lucky to be able to see "Nimona" in the theatrical setting for a special screening, and the experience was revelatory. "We made a film for a big screen, but our movie got to be received by anybody who needed it immediately around the world," explained Ryan. "That is very powerful. We don't have box office numbers to look back to, but we have [a sense of] how people are connecting with the film." A film like "Nimona" couldn't exist had it been forced to endure the ridiculous requirements for international distribution. When the film was still housed under the Disney banner, folks who worked on the film said they were struggling to keep a same-sex kiss in the final cut.

LGBTQIA+ stories still have to fight for inclusion, and as GLAAD President and CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis said during the 2023 Primetime Emmy Awards, "What the world sees on TV directly influences how we treat each other and the decisions we make in our living rooms, schools, at work, and at the ballot box." Unfortunately, LGBTQIA+ shows keep getting prematurely canceled despite boasting vocal fanbases, and mainstream feature films dependent on international box office success either downplay or completely erase even the slightest hints of queerness. The sheer existence of "Nimona" is a massive success.

And what of "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse?" For all the talk of superhero fatigue in the wake of less-than-stellar box office performances by "The Marvels," "Blue Beetle," "The Flash," and "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom," the second film in the animated "Spider-Verse" trilogy did pretty damn well, landing in the top three at the domestic box office behind "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" and "Barbie." Co-director Kemp Powers called it "selective omission," citing that "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" also performed well financially, but both films are often left out of the superhero fatigue conversation or treated as the exceptions and not the rule. "It's like they don't want to just say, 'Look, it has to just be a good movie that connects to an audience, that excites people,'" he explained. "That's something that can't be plotted out."

And he's right. Very few box office pundits predicted the overwhelming success of "Barbie," and even fewer predicted that the superhero surge would crash quite as hard as it did. And in looking at the success of "Spider-Verse" and "GOTG Vol. 3," they're often excused as outliers as they're the continuation of already successful stories. But as we saw with "The Marvels" and "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom," there's more to it than that. Powers expressed his hope that this will lead to a reevaluation of what "success" actually entails. "At least with theatrical, these aren't cheap movies, and the metric of success, it can be so high when a film costs this much," he said. "I would just love to see more smaller films with smaller budgets — figuring out ways to do it that you're able to take even greater risks."

Animation is risky by the nature of the medium, where the only limitation is creative imagination ... and a budget to bring the vision to life.

And then there's a film like "The Boy and the Heron," the latest film from animation auteur Hayao Miyazaki. In Japan, the film had the biggest opening weekend for a Studio Ghibli film in history and set a new three-day record for films on IMAX screens in the country, even without a marketing campaign. The movie would later become the first original anime film (and Miyazaki's first film) to top the box office in Canada and the United States. And yeah, that certainly is impressive, but that's not been the cultural conversation surrounding "The Boy and the Heron." Instead, we've been talking about how personal the story is to Miyazaki the man (as told through the lens of Miyazaki the artist), how it fits into the greater oeuvre of Miyazaki's work, and what the film has to say about his legacy as one of the greatest filmmakers in history.

"The Boy and the Heron" is far from the only international film on the radar for the Oscars, too. Makoto Shinkai's "Suzume," Pablo Berger's "Robot Dreams," Takehiko Inoue's "The First Slam Dunk," and Yuzuru Tachikawa's "Blue Giant" all have underdog potential to nab a nomination, as does the stop-motion sequel "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget," which was distributed by Netflix but produced in the U.K. It's fascinating because many view the success of the first "Chicken Run" and subsequent snub by the Academy as the incident that helped give rise to the Best Animated Feature award. (To be clear, the Academy has never gone on the record to confirm this as factual, but as the saying goes, if you know, you know.)

Alas, as much as I'd like to pretend the box office doesn't matter, it does ... because we live in a capitalist hellscape where money reigns supreme. "Wish" co-director Fawn Veerasunthorn spoke in the roundtable about box office success giving her hope because it "speaks to how far a reach this medium could [have]." Those who work in animation and fans of the medium know how important, impactful, and vital animation is to our world, but it is nice to have definitive, trackable data to prove what we already know.

But there's still measurable success to be found even by looking at the films that aren't in the mainstream conversation yet still have overwhelming support from diehard fandoms. Cartoon Network released "Craig Before the Creek," the absolutely incredible prequel film to the prematurely canceled hit series, "Craig of the Creek." Adam Sandler has been on a hot streak with family-friendly fare on Netflix, with his animated flick about a class pet, "Leo," frequently ending up on the streamer's Top 10 most-watched list. "Trolls Band Together" had millennials showing up to the theaters for a "kid's movie" in droves because it provided an unofficial N*SYNC reunion, and "The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart" served as the perfect ending to a series that was too good for this world.

Animation is a beloved art form and a medium that unfortunately still has to fight against a ridiculous stigma, despite the fact most people's introduction to the world of cinema is through animation. But 2023 was a hugely successful year for animated features, and the box office was only one part of that.