With the Labor Day Weekend officially in gear, we take a look back at the first eight months of the year to see which animated movies were the most successful titles at the box office. It’s obvious by now that Universal/Illumination’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie was the blockbuster animated pic of 2023. The well-received pic, directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, with a script by Matthew Fogel, first debuted domestically on April 5 and ruled the box office until the arrival of Sony Pictures Animation’s sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on June 2nd. The Nintendo classic game-inspired title has had a great run with $574.876,710 box office gross domestically and a super impressive global haul of $1,359,686,799 worldwide. Meanwhile Spider-Verse, which will begin its DVD/Blu-ray run on Sept. 5 (Tuesday), became the second-place champ with a worldwide gross of $689,342,516 and a U.S. total of $381,210,457.
Despite a lukewarm start, the Peter Sohn-directed Pixar summer release, Elemental proved that sometimes a slow and steady performance can translate to big numbers at the box office as well. The movie, which had a $29.5 million opening weekend, has been able to draw family audiences to theaters consistently over the past three months. This past week, Elemental’s worldwide totals reached $469.5 million , which beat Pixar’s own 2006 pic Cars ($462 million worldwide) and the original 1995 Toy Story ($394 million worldwide).
Paramount’s inventive new take on the The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem came out of its shell on August 2, and has had a great run at the box office as well. The film, which was directed by Jeff Rowe (with a script by Rowe, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit) has made over $139.7 million worldwide and should continue to perform well until the fall crop of family pictures hit the big screen.
Animation fans will have several hot new titles to look for in the months ahead:
- Sept. 15 The Inventor (Blue Fox Ent.), Director: Jim Capobianco
- Sept. 22 PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie (Paramount), Director: Cal Brunker
- Oct. 13. Inspector Sun & the Curse of the Black Widow (Viva Kids) Dir: Julio Soto Gurpide
- Oct. 20 My Love Affair with Marriage (8 Above), Director: Signe Bauman
- Nov. 17 Trolls Band Together (DreamWorks/Univ.), Director.: Walt Dohrn
- Nov. 21 Leo (Netflix), Directors: Robert Smigel, Robert Marianetti, David Wachtenheim
- Nov. 22 Wish (Disney), Directors: Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn
- Dec. 15 Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (Aardman/Netflix), Dir.: Sam Fell
- Dec. 22 Migration (Illumination/Univ.), Director: Benjamin Renner
Release Dates to Be Announced:
- The Boy and the Heron (GKIDS), Director: Hayao Miyazaki
- They Shot the Piano Player (Sony Pictures Classics), Directors: Javier Mariscal, Fernando Trueba
- The Peasants (Breakthru Productions),Directors: DK Welchman, Hugh Welchman
GKIDS will release Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” in time for this year’s awards season consideration. 
They Shot the Piano Player (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics, Trueba PC, Mariscal Studios)
Source: Box Office Mojo, IMDB, 9/2/2023
