The Wild Robot Scores Surprise $35 Million Box Office Debut After Rave Reviews

"The Wild Robot," the heartstring-tugging new animated film from "How to Train Your Dragon" co-director Christopher Sanders, earned a rare 10 out of 10 review from /Film when it screened at Fantastic Fest earlier this month. The story follows a robot called ROZZUM unit 7134, aka "Roz," who emerges from her crate to find that she's been shipwrecked on an island with lots of animals, but no humans. After an orphaned gosling imprints on her, Roz has to figure out how to be a mother — something that wasn't exactly included in her programming. 

/Film's Ryan Scott wasn't alone in giving this film a rave review. "The Wild Robot" has a near-perfect score of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing, which might be the reason it's racing ahead of expectations at the box office. Per The Wrap, Universal was projecting a $20 million-plus debut, and third-party estimates were in the $24-30 million range. "The Wild Robot" has surpassed even the top end of those projections; it's now on track for a $35 million opening weekend after grossing $11.3 million on Friday (including $2 million from Thursday previews). A lot of the ticket sales are from walk-up traffic rather than bookings, so the box office could potentially climb even higher depending on Sunday's audience turnout. 

"The Wild Robot" is based on the children's book of the same name by Peter Brown, so it's not quite an original, but it's not building on a pre-existing movie franchise either. That makes this start all the more impressive. DreamWorks "Shrek" spin-off "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish" only grossed $12.4 million in its opening weekend a couple of years ago, and "The Wild Robot" has almost tripled that. If this film goes on to be as leggy as "The Last Wish" was, the studio could have another surprise box office hit on its hands.

"The Wild Robot" has hit theaters at the dawn of awards season, and it would be a real shock if it didn't get at least a nomination for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards. The Oscar buzz started in April, not long after the last Oscars ceremony, when footage from "The Wild Robot" screened at CinemaCon. Deadline reported one studio executive, who had seen the entire film, saying that "he cried all the way through the last hour." 

At the time that could have just been dismissed as a PR exaggeration, but now both critics and casual moviegoers have confirmed that a pack of tissues is a necessary precaution for seeing "The Wild Robot." That doesn't mean this is a downer movie, though. By the sounds of it, it's an emotional rollercoaster that hits on a lot of themes that tend to make people well up, including: robots learning to have human emotions, adorable animals in peril, and unlikely adoptive parents of quirky orphans (naturally, Pedro Pascal is in the voice cast). 

"The Wild Robot" director Christopher Sanders already has three Oscar nominations under his belt, for "Lilo & Stitch," "How to Train Your Dragon," and "The Croods." Could this be the contender that finally brings home the gold?