Deadline’s Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament has returned, and as you’ll see from the most profitable films of 2024 that we’re about to disclose, a movie’s game doesn’t end at the box office. Rather, its downstream revenues and subsequent home windows must be taken into account. Streaming continues to be a wildcard: While traditional motion picture studios such as Disney, Warner Bros, Sony, Paramount and Universal rely on lucrative pay two and pay three streamer deals to catapult their slates into the black, those streamers who’ve embraced theatrical (specifically Amazon MGM Studios and Apple Original Films) have a clandestine metric as to how they evaluate a movie’s post-cinema success. By traditional studio P&L standards, some of those releases would be considered flops. Given that, Apple and Amazon are excluded from this year’s survey. The Most Valuable Blockbuster series runs later rather than sooner as we gather the best data possible from seasoned and trusted sources on 2024’s event films, bombs, and low- to midsize-budget wins.
The Film
KUNG FU PANDA 4
DreamWorks Animation/Universal
Since taking over DreamWorks Animation in 2016, it’s clear that Universal prizes the toon house as much as it does Illumination. If DWA’s franchise films were going to continue, it was crucial to rein in costs, even with stars, and that’s what has happened here with Kung Fu Panda 4. An average Kung Fu Panda movie previously cost between $130 million-$150 million; the fourthquel is a thrifty $85M, which is what Illumination titles are typically bought from. Former DWA boss Jeffrey Katzenberg originally envisioned a six-film trilogy, but after releasing Kung Fu Panda 3 nine years ago, the fourth was stalled as the studio wanted to take time to develop one of their crown jewels next to Shrek and Puss in Boots. The eight-year gap gave director Mike Mitchell (Shrek Forever After, Trolls) and co-director Stephanie Stine (She-Ra and the Princess of Power) more power with the GoPro tools to create incredible effects. The goal was to enhance the action and take the audience on a journey through Po’s point of view. The approach, combined with digital paint brush styles and dynamic effects, was also developed for DWA’s The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.
The Box Score
The Bottom Line
In a post-strike box office already warmed up by the opening of Legendary/Warner Bros’ Dune: Part Two the weekend before, Universal chose a release date for Kung Fu Panda 4 smack in the spring break range and it opened to $57.9M, the second best domestic start of the franchise after the 2008 original, which bowed to $60.2M. China, which hasn’t been a place for a lot of Hollywood fare since Covid, grossed a robust $51.7M. The over-18 audience and fans of kung fu cinema has always been a cornerstone crowd for the success of Kung Fu Panda, and this one pulled in close to 50% ages 18-34. Universal took Kung Fu Panda 4 through the Symphony marketing program, which is only reserved for massive event films; it promotes titles across all NBCUniversal tentacles, from theme parks to linear to Xfinity cable boxes to the Peacock streaming service. Other promos included three spots airing during the 2024 Super Bowl. Heat for the movie was clear, with 400M global views from all the trailers that were dropped. Participations of $35M include bonuses paid to the franchise’s mainstay star, Jack Black. In regards to the $150M streaming figure, DWA movies after they play on the four-month Peacock window go to Netflix in another revenue-generating waterfall. Many feared family films wouldn’t come back after Covid, but from a mass moviegoer perspective they’re pretty much a surefire bet nowadays, here with the third most profitable family movie in a row in the 2024 Deadline revenue tournament after Mufasa and Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Net profit after all ancillaries is $178M.