The history of animated movies in September

Typically animated movies launch with some breathing room in between each other. Even as little as a dead weekend between new Pixar and DreamWorks titles is customary. Transformers One and The Wild Robot is eschewing that trend. The former Paramount tentpole dropped this past weekend on September 20th. The latest Chris Sanders directorial effort, meanwhile, hits theaters seven days later on September 27th. These two titles are mimicking the cramped Thanksgiving 1991 frame when An America Tale: Fievel Goes West and Beauty and the Beast both dropped into theaters over two weeks. This time, though, the battlefield is in late September, which has become a hot spot to launch animated family movies.

Who knew late September, typically thought of as a Hollywood dead zone, would transform into a release slot studios scramble to launch animated kid-friendly titles in? For almost two decades, this has been the status quo…but late September wasn’t always the place to launch animated hits.  

Back in the early 2000s, there were only a handful of places to launch animated movies. Summertime, the domain Disney (starting with The Lion King) and DreamWorks Animation (starting with Shrek) were obvious go-to domains. Kids were off school in this season, after all. Ice Age turned March into a hot commodity in 2002. However, it would take a few years before other studios joined Blue Sky Studios in that spot on the calendar. Disney typically used February's President's Day weekend to launch a cheapie animated feature like The Tigger Movie. Thanksgiving and Christmas could also launch animated features, though the former holiday was far more popular launchpad than the latter.

As for September? Nobody paid it much mind. As late as 2004, the month had only spawned two movies that grossed $30+ million domestically on opening weekend. This was the quiet month, a transition period between the bustling blockbuster months and award season. It certainly wasn't thought of as a place for animated family movies. No animated titles resided in September's 30 biggest domestic opening weekends circa. 2004. Only one (Remember the Titans) qualified as a family-friendly title. A year later, though, one film dared to answer whether or not September could house animated family film hits.

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride opened in late September 2005 and grossed a solid $19 million. Nobody at Pixar was quaking in their boots over such a bow. However, it was the 13th biggest September debut at the time. This spooky title of undead lovers also established an interesting precedent for future September animated family movies. Opening a month before Halloween really benefited titles with an ooky atmosphere, like Corpse Bride. Now that one animated family movie hadn’t crashed and burned premiering in September, it was time to try again with a costlier enterprise, Open Season.

Sony Pictures Animation’s debut feature opened in theaters opened in theaters everywhere on September 29. Sony choosing this date reflected another reason studios had no choice but to embrace September for animated family movies in 2006: competition. This year saw more computer-animated family movies opening in theaters than everywhere. Nary a month went by this year without The Wild, The Ant Bully, or Barnyard opening in theaters. Audiences even experienced three consecutive weekends each delivering a new PG-rated animated family movie at the end of summer 2006! Every corner of the year was so crowded that studios like Sony simply had to revel in September.

Here, Open Season cracked $23.6 million on opening weekend, a merely average number among 2006's animated features. Still, it didn't crash and burn in this release slot. Heck, Open Season did better than summertime animated films Barnyard and The Ant Bully. Most importantly, its soundtrack produced the absolute bangers "Love You in The Fall" and "Wild As I Wanna Be". Those songs alone justify the existence of this otherwise very derivative animated title.

After Open Season, Sony crusaded to turn late September into the company’s go-to spot for releasing new animated films. This approach mimicked how Pixar cornered mid-June and Blue Sky Studios had springtime months like April and March. In 2009, the commitment to late September paid off with Sony's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. This motion picture opened to a terrific $30.3 million. That sizeable sum outpaced all but two previous September opening weekends circa. 2009. Most intriguingly, it did well in the weeks that followed, doing a little over four times its opening weekend. October was largely devoid of new family movies, giving Meatballs room to flourish in the marketplace. Another advantage emerged for late September titles: legging out through October. 

A lucrative re-release of The Lion King in September 2011, which opened to $30 million and grossed a little over $90 million domestically, further cemented September as a new go-to launchpad for animated family fare. The following year, Sony Animation really struck hold with Hotel Transylvania. Opening with $42 million, this Adam Sandler feature scored both the biggest September opening ever and the first $40+ million bow in the month. Like Corpse Bride seven years earlier, Transylvania (with its premise focusing on goofy versions of famous monsters) partially flourished because of its close proximity to Halloween. September's beneficial timing for family movies was becoming more and more apparent. Once Hotel Transylvania ended 2012 as the 19th biggest movie of the year domestically, September had officially become a juggernaut release slot for animated family movies.

By the end of 2015, the first two Hotel Transylvania movies owned the top two September opening weekends in history. Unsurprisingly, other studios began moving onto this territory. Laika exploited this timeframe for The Boxtrolls in 2014 and got a solid $17.3 million bow, still the biggest domestic opening weekend ever for Laika. The Coraline outfit wasn't the only one eyeballing this timeframe, though. From 2016 to 2018, Warner Animation Group released one new animated movie (Storks, The Lego Ninjago Movie, Smallfoot) a year in the late September slot. This studio pioneered this release strategy with Corpse Bride. Now, after The Lego Movie’s success, Warner wanted to return to late September as a conquering hero. That never came to pass. All three of those titles opened lower than Open Season more than a decade earlier. Among the trio, only Smallfoot developed legs. The Lego Ninjago Movie especially proved disappointing with its $20 million bow. That opening was just 15% better than The Boxtrolls and scored an opening weekend slightly less than 1/3 of what The Lego Movie debuted in February 2014. A late September release couldn't salvage a Lego spin-off nobody was super curious about.

A variety of problems plagued these assorted titles, including their respective marketing campaigns lacking the all-ages appeal defining the biggest animated movie hits. Then again, perhaps Warner Bros. is just cursed with animated movies. Aside from Happy Feet, The Lego Movie, and The Lego Batman Movie, the studio behind Bugs Bunny has a dire box office track record with animated fare. Warner Animation Group took September 2019 off, thus allowing the cheaper DreamWorks cartoon Abominable to open in that release slot instead.

Sony Pictures Animation has not returned to the late September spot as of this writing. Titles like Hotel Transylvania: Summer Vacation and the two Spider-Verse installments were big enough to flourish in timeframes like July or June. After the 2010s wrapped up, it wasn't clear which studios would now claim late September. The hesitancy of major studios to release animated family movies into theaters in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic meant it wasn't until 2023 that an animated movie once again opened in late September. This time, Paramount embraced the release date for PAW Patrol: The Might Movie, which grossed $65.2 million. That's no Hotel Transylvania, but that's a fantastic haul for a $30 million budgeted feature. Heck, it made more than The Lego Ninjago Movie despite costing $40 million less to produce!

This month, Transformers One and The Wild Robot are carrying on the legacy of Open Season, Hotel Transylvania, and other movies. Transformers One didn't quite live up to its predecessors thanks to this prequel/reboot coming under expectations with a $25 million opening weekend. Amusingly though, that opening weekend would’ve been incomprehensible for an animated movie 20 years ago. Heck, 20 years ago, Transformers One would’ve secured the third-biggest September opening in history.  The September marketplace has changed drastically over two decades thanks to the sharp increase in theatrical animated family fare. With more studios bent on delivering the next Inside Out or Shrek, conventional go-to dates for these titles fill up fast. Studios have had to get creative on where they launch Hotel Transylvania or The Wild Robot.

If there’s anything studios should take away from this phenomenon, it’s that no time of the year is truly cursed for releasing movies. Executives and movie geeks alike enjoy making jokes about certain months being “dead” or “cursed”, which can be amusing. However, nine times out of ten, people will show up to an enticing-looking movie no matter when it’s released. Average moviegoers won’t think “But why is this dropping over the weekend after Thanksgiving?”. They’ll come out if your feature has solid marketing and something that appeals to the general public. Let’s get creative with our release dates instead of so often cramming everything into just a handful of July or March weekends. Just look at what a game-changer it was when Sony took a risk on a late September date for the movie that launched that ever-popular classic "Love You in the Fall"...