OldBoy

as it looks like it will only pull in roughly $20 million this weekend according to estimates.

It has to be a huge disappointment to go up against "The Incredibles" and lose handily, no?

C.H.U.D.

A friend of mine took her 7 year old cousin to see it, and according to my friend, she was bored all the way through it. Are you sure it cost that much? That sounds rrrrreeeeaaalllyyy high.

Kal-El

I think it cost so much because of the technology used. It wasn't just motion-capture. They called this "Performance capture" so instead of just body movements being rendered digitally, they also put sensors on Hanks' face so to capture his facial muscle movement as well. I'm guessing that's quite a lot to process in post-production.

Rammsteinfan

It may do better near xmas time since its still November. Personally I have no interest in seeing it and I love cartoons/3d animated stuff. It just looked boring, all over the place, and very dull.

marty888

The only reason I'm probably going to see this is because it's playing in 3-D a 15 minute walk from home. I haven't seen a 3-D movie in a while and apparently that aspect of the film works just great.

Verbal Gorilla

I would think this would cost less. Isn't one of the reasons for motion capture in general is to replace the extremely timely process of paying dozens of animators to realistically recreate human or animal movement? Of course, when you use $25 million dollar "performance-capture" subjects...you probably don't save on him at least.

fumanstan

If they needed to develop that technology to begin with, i can imagine it raising the costs.

The Nature Boy

I think this will pick up business and sustain as Christmas comes. I'd like to check this out, but I'd never see a Christmas movie before we get through Thanksgiving.

The box office isn't encouraging, but not suprising considering the traditional power of Pixar films. I would have released it Thanksgiving Day were it me.

Trigger

Isn't this playing at Imax? If so, doesn't that mean it'll be there for alot longer than a regular movie in a theater? Perhaps it can make back the money over time. Nah - probably not.

majorjoe23

I think it will make more than $20 million this weekend, probably closer to $25. The bumps on Saturdays for kids films can be huge. Add in the fact that Thanksgiving is coming up, and I think the movie will have some legs.

But that production cost is insane.

Mr. Salty

Computer animation on its own isn't cheap. The budget of "The Incredibles" was a little under $100 million. Add in how much Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis got paid, and you can bump that up another $20-30 million easily. Then, as others have said, you have the technology development, and there you go.

I have no desire to see "Polar Express." It looks completely uninspired, not to mention noisy and in your face. There are too many other good films in theaters right now, so yeah, I think it'll be a box office disappointment.

Rammsteinfan

The only realistic actor looking CG movie I liked was Final Fantasy. Too bad it did so poorly.

Jackskeleton

The animation looks crued for CGI compared to the incredibles. The story doesn't seem that compelling on paper. The trailers give pretty much everything away. It is coming up the weekend after the incredibles. Families have still yet to see that one. They don't want to go again.

Over all it will make it's money back. Just gonna take some time.

DonnachaOne

We have only sold out one show of The Polar Express.

That was only because it was doing so poorly, we put it into a smaller, 125-seat theater. It was barely quarter-filling the houses we had them in on Wednesday.

A new movie like this shouldn't be doing so poorly. I see an article about Zemeckis in a few years saying he'd like to get back to 'simple, good movies again'.

PopcornTreeCt

I read that the movie has to make $500 mill worldwide to break even. Because of all the money spent on it and advertising it. The technology had to be created specifically for the film. Zemeckis is producing another CG film but insists it will be cheaper because the technology has already been created.

JMLEWIS1

I love the book, it is very moving and sweet, but it seems like they would really have to stretch it to make it a movie...that might be why some find it boring...I'll see it, but not until much close to Christmas

mdc3000

I thought it was awesome and am going to see it in IMax today... well worth your time.

MATT

Rammsteinfan

An article on Yahoo today said it cost about $270 mil total to make and market this movie...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...e_boxoffice_dc

theneobez

Wow. . .is it me or does that sound insane that they actually gave this the green light? It doesn't take a genius to tell you that it's not going to make nearly that amount.

Deftones

That's not necessarily true. A movie like this will have legs throughout the holiday season. It probably won't make back it's production budget here in the state, but it will more than make that back in DVD sales.

RyoHazuki

The execs just see "Hanks, Zemeckis, cgi". 90% of the time, that would have been a slam dunk.

Seeker

Well, I hope it does well - I paired my Christmas book with the Polar Express book at Amazon, so I hope people at LEAST decide to buy the book (and mine, of course!) at Amazon!

As for the movie, I went and saw it, of course, given the previous paragraph.... and I was impressed with the technologies, but the story is definitely targeted toward younger kids - I was bored with parts of it.

PopcornTreeCt

Hanks and Zemeckis have a lot of pull in Hollywoodland.

Michael Corvin

fixed.

I agree, it looked fabulous. I prefer what they did on Animatrix though. Even though it is only a short, it had a better story and characters in that 10 minutes than the entire length of final fantasy.

Steve Phillips

Keep in the mind the IMAX 3-D version will play longer than the general flat release and that the IMAX ticket prices are much higher. No way that it will offset the loss though, but it will help.