With “The Bad Guys 2,” Universal hopes for some mid-budget success with families before kids return to school. But for producers DreamWorks Animation, this marks a key step in the company’s efforts to build new franchises from the ground up in an entertainment landscape littered with loud and shiny alternatives.
“The Bad Guys” hit theaters in spring 2022 at a time when it was still unclear how willing families were to return to theaters after the COVID-19 shutdown. Against a reported $70 million budget, the film made a respectable $250 million worldwide, and two years later, a sequel was announced.
That sequel, which arrives this weekend and is projected to match or slightly exceed its predecessor’s $24.9 million domestic opening, is the first follow-up to an animated film released after the shutdown. There have been sequels to other films released in the past four years, namely horror titles like “Smile” and “M3GAN,” but this is the first one aimed at families who have shown that if they are going to spend upwards of $60 on four movie tickets before concessions, it’s going to be for a movie about something they’re familiar with.
“The audience is definitely more fragmented, especially with the sheer quantity of options they have at home, and that changes how and when they discover new films,” DreamWorks Animation president Margie Cohn told TheWrap.
For DreamWorks, “Bad Guys 2” represents an opportunity to prove that it’s still in the franchise-building business in a big way. It’s the studio, after all, that minted money with popular animated franchises such as “Shrek” and “How to Train Your Dragon.” But the original “How to Train Your Dragon,” which just got a hit live-action remake, came out 15 years ago; and “Shrek” is nearly a quarter of a century old now. Original animated films are much harder to break out now.
Cohn regularly refers to DreamWorks Animation films like “Bad Guys” and the Oscar-nominated “The Wild Robot” as original films. Technically they’re not, as they are based on YA novels by Aaron Blabey and Peter Brown, respectively.
But in terms of marketing those films to the public, “Bad Guys” and “Wild Robot” aren’t exactly “The Hunger Games” when it comes to mass awareness of the source material, and that means they have faced the same challenges as the numerous true originals that Disney and Pixar have released in recent years, mostly to disappointing results.
Pixar’s “Elemental” legged out to $496.4 million in 2023, but “Elio” bombed last month with $138 million while Disney’s Thanksgiving bust “Strange World” ($73.6 million) and “Wish” ($255 million) combined for less than a third of the $1.05 billion that “Moana 2” made from its November 2024 release. Alongside films like Illumination’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” the audience’s message is clear: they’ll buy movie tickets for known IP and sequels, but originals are largely the domain of streaming, with its at-home convenience and lower cost.
DreamWorks’ box office record reflects this. “The Bad Guys” and “The Wild Robot” made less at the box office, even before inflation adjustment, than pre-pandemic franchise launchers like “Shrek,” “How to Train Your Dragon” and “The Boss Baby.” Granted, those two new films, unlike “Boss Baby” or “Dragon,” were produced on budgets below $100 million, a trend that should continue as DreamWorks is set to increase their use of overseas animation vendors in production.
Despite the challenges, Cohn says DreamWorks isn’t backing down and is instead leaning on sequels like “Kung Fu Panda 4” — the studio’s highest-grossing post-shutdown release with $547.9 million — or the upcoming “Shrek 5.”
“We are committed to doing one original and one franchise film every year. We don’t want to stop searching for new characters and new stories to tell,” she said, pointing to “Forgotten Island,” a true original adventure comedy that DWA will release in September 2026 ahead of “Shrek 5.”
Still, it takes overwhelmingly strong word-of-mouth for animated movies without an IP hook to convince families to give them a chance theatrically rather than wait for streaming. “The Wild Robot,” which was one of last year’s best-reviewed films of any kind, opened to a modest $35.7 million domestic last September but legged out to a 4.03x multiple and a final domestic total of $143.9 million.
Those legs, combined with the sustained post-theatrical interest that “The Wild Robot” earned from its Oscar buzz, got DreamWorks to greenlight a sequel. Conversely, “The Bad Guys,” while well-received by critics and building its own devoted fanbase, didn’t get quite the same level of widespread acclaim. So how might the sequel do?
Data from film tracking company Greenlight Analytics suggests we won’t see the big breakout numbers that “Moana 2” and “Across the Spider-Verse” earned after their predecessors got years of streaming play, barring a significant late surge in interest after reviews are published. While awareness among audiences is consistent with the first “Bad Guys,” intent to see the sequel in theaters has remained flat among polled moviegoers at 34%, similar to “Elio” ahead of its $20.8 million opening
By comparison, the first “Bad Guys” saw theatrical intent rise from 26% to 45% in its runup to release, perhaps getting a boost like Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” did from families who were making their first trip back to theaters after a year stuck at home.
This is a factor in why tracking for “Bad Guys 2” has remained in the mid-$20 million range, but that’s also on par with the $28 million opening that Paramount’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” earned from a similar release slot in August 2023, going on to gross $118 million domestic.
“The Bad Guys 2” might be able to have a similar domestic run if word-of-mouth is strong, and if it matches the overseas performance of its predecessor, it will be another modest success for DreamWorks against its $80 million budget.
But pre-release data doesn’t suggest that two years of streaming play have built up increased interest to see Mr. Wolf and his band of former thieves in theaters for their second round the way “Moana,” “Inside Out” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” built up buzz for their sequels. While those 2010s films had the advantage of being popular streaming picks while families were stuck indoors during the pandemic, “The Bad Guys” hit home release at a time when the world was opening back up.
Building new family franchises in the 2020s without a popular icon like Mario or Sonic is a challenge that DreamWorks, along with the rest of Hollywood, is still trying to figure out. But they will need to find an answer soon, because audiences won’t be satisfied with legacyquels and remakes of 2000s and 2010s hits forever.
At the very least, theaters can count on DreamWorks to keep trying.
