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Turbulent Times in Toon Town

The success of this weekend’s ‘Dog Man’ is a reminder that animation sells, but the next major studio animation movie doesn’t arrive until mid-June. Why are theaters still being starved of wholly animated family movies?

Dogman
Why aren’t more animated kids movies trying to capitalize on the market opportunity? After Dog Man, the next cartoon from a major studio—Pixar’s Elio—won’t arrive until June. Photo: Courtesy of Universal Pictures
Scott Mendelson
February 4, 2025

Dog Man, DreamWorks Animation’s $40 million adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s mega-popular graphic novel series, nabbed a robust $36 million domestic this past weekend—more than Captain Underpants, also adapted from a Pilkey kid-lit series, which opened to $24 million in 2017. Aside from being an unusually lucrative debut for an animated film in January, it is also the latest evidence that Universal’s non-Illumination animation label can mint new franchises from popular, but not ubiquitous, material. This follows recent successes like The Bad Guys ($250 million in 2022) and The Wild Robot, which earned $325 million last year and has a slew of award nominations. Both of the latter were also adapted from popular children’s books.