A Banner Year at the Box Office

As we put the finishing touches to this month’s magazine, we got word that Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck It Ralph 2 was a huge hit over the Thanksgiving holiday, bringing in around $84.5 million domestically and a global total of close to $126 million worldwide. This is great news for all of us who love or work in the animation business. In fact, looking at the Top 20 list of box office winners of 2018, you would be hard pressed to find a title that wasn’t either fully animated or used some CG animation to tell its story. Fully animated movies such as Incredibles 2, Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch, Hotel Transylvania 3 and Smallfoot and CG-heavy comic-book based movies such as Black

Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2, Venom and Ant-Man and the Wasp continued to feed the appetites of the filmgoing public.

In this month’s issue, we’ll take you behind the scenes of two of the most anticipated family movies of the year: Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns. While Spider-Verse takes the familiar Marvel webslinger into unchartered territories in terms of CG animation and its ethnically diverse hero, Rob Marshall’s Mary Poppins sequel gives us a brand new magical governess, with refreshingly retro 2D animation (courtesy of Duncan Studio).

Also featured in our year-end issue are in-depth features about the making of diverse, indie features such as Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer and Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles. It’s quite entertaining to find out about the unique challenges and artistic influences of each one of these animated movies, which will be worth looking for in limited release.

We also had the chance to catch up with some of the talented folks at DreamWorks’ TV animation division, which celebrated its fifth anniversary this year. Don’t miss this chance to read all about how they managed to deliver so many great animated series in such a short period of time. This is the place to look if you were seeking another example of how it is possible to achieve what seems impossible by putting together a great group of talented people and inspiring them to do their best work. As a wise man once said, “the only place you will find success before work is the dictionary!”

Since this issue will land in your hands in early December, I wanted to wish you all a wonderful, peaceful holiday season. On behalf of everyone here at Animation Magazine, I also hope that 2019 will be a good year for everyone — full of love, happiness, peace and prosperity and free of all the hate and misery that divide us.