Hotel Transylvania Takes a Vampire-Sized Bite out of the Weekend Box-Office

The critics may not be loving it, but US audiences clearly are; Sony Pictures Animation's Genndy Tartakovsky-directed Hotel Transylvania has done the studio proud on its tenth anniversary, opening to an astonishing (estimated) $43 million!

The studio's seventh film (including two Aardman releases, Arthur Christmas and The Pirates! in an Adventures with Scientists) sits at a lukewarm 42% on Rotten Tomatoes, but has raked in over a million dollars for every one of those percent at the US box office, placing it in the number 1 spot this weekend. Hotel T is the studio's strongest opener (far surpassing Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' previous record of $30.3 million), and, if it proves to have reasonable legs, it could be the studio's highest grossing film yet! The film has also raked in $8.1 million from foreign territories.

Second place this weekend goes to another Sony pic, Rian Johnson's acclaimed sci-fi actioner, Looper, with $21.2 million (again, estimated). Looper boasts a cast including Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt, while Hotel T has the more youth-friendly line-up of Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg and Selena Gomez.

In spite of the negative reviews, it seems audiences are really taking to Sony's monster-flick (of course, the timing isn't bad either, with Halloween just around the corner). Speaking from an outside perspective, having not seen the film yet (it doesn't open here until 12th October), I think what's resonating with audiences is exactly what's putting critics off: it doesn't take itself too seriously. Hotel T looks like fun for the sake of fun, with not too much focus on emotional twists - the 'Art of' book stated that they repeatedly chose to forego solemn moments in favour of comedy. Jerry Beck says it best, that Hotel T is a "full “cartoon” feature"; just look how perfectly poised and considered the animation is! Genndy Tartakovsky's stylised cartoon style is here in abundance!

Seen Hotel Transylvania? What did you think? Let us know below!

Stats via Box Office Mojo.

Best of the Last Ten Years A113Animation Awards - Final Nominees

For the past month and a half, we've been running our very interactive "Best of the Last Ten Years (2001 - 2011)" A113Animation Awards. I'll be handing out the official A113Animation Award for that, but we've also been running polls to decide "The People's Favourite" too! Now, we've arrived at the final list of nominees for the two awards.

Check out the final lists after the jump break!

Vibrant Poster for The Croods

Moments ago we shared the new Wreck-It Ralph poster with you, and now we've got another poster for you. Via ComingSoon.net, check out the bright, vibrant and stylised poster for DreamWorks' The Croods!

The Croods was originally in production at Aardman, during their deal with DreamWorks, as Crood Awakening, and directed by Kirk DeMicco (Space Chimps), but DreamWorks and Aardman's parting of ways ended that incarnation of the project. Now directed by Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon), and featuring the voices of Nicolas Cage, Ryan Reynolds and Emma Stone, The Croods will be the first picture in DreamWorks' 5-year distribution with 20th Century Fox when it hits cinemas on 22nd March, 2013 

New Wreck-It Ralph Poster and TV Spots

A couple of weeks ago we got a concoction of fantastic new posters for Disney's Wreck-It Ralph, showing the film's characters alongside classic video game icons. Today, via Disney Movies UK's Twitter feed, we get another wicked new poster for Disney's 52nd animated feature.

The poster combines the classic characters that we've seen previously, such as Sonic and Q*bert, and the film's leading original quartet of Ralph, Vanellope, Felix and Sergeant Calhoun. Another great poster in the great advertising campaign of the great looking Wreck-It Ralph. Why yes, I am looking forward to it!

To further whet our ever more insatiable appetites, we also get two great new TV spots for the film! The spots, while funny, highlight the film's emotional core surprisingly well. They show Sarah Silverman's character, Vanellope von Schweetz, as rather sweet and helpless, as opposed to how annoying she's came across as in the trailers - we also get the first proper look at Vanellope's car from "Sugar Rush"! Not forgetting our first real look at Jane Lynch's Sergeant Calhoun.

Check out the Jane Lynch introduced TV spot below, and head here to watch the "Game Changer" spot, which helpfully has embedding disabled.



The TV spots also finally give us Wreck-It Ralph's rating: PG, unsurprisingly. Directed by Futurama and The Simpsons veteran, Rich Moore, Wreck-It Ralph is due out in America on 2nd November, and the UK on 15th February, 2013.

Review Round-Up - Frankenweenie and Hotel Transylvania

Following precious few releases in the first half of the year, it's been a strong summer for animation, with great films like Brave and ParaNorman - oh, and there was The Lorax too I guess. Coming up in winter we have DreamWorks' Rise of the Guardians and Disney's Wreck-It Ralph - as well as Pixar's 3D re-release of Monsters, Inc. But right now, as we turn towards autumn, we've got two big releases (and, finally, the UK release of Madagascar 3): Hotel Transylvania and Frankenweenie.

Check out our recaps, reviews coverage, and thoughts after the jump break!