Blue Sky Studios has never been a big player in the U.S. — its latest film, Rio 2 , opened with a just-OK $39 million. But overseas, the studio pulls in some seriously big money.
Rio 2
20th Century Fox / Blue Sky Studios
Rio 2, the latest animated feature film from Blue Sky Studios, opened this weekend in North America with an estimated $39 million. That's just under the $39.2 million opening weekend for the first Rio movie, which went on to gross an unexceptional $143.6 million domestically in 2011.
With that kind of shrug-worthy result, one may wonder why Blue Sky even bothered to make a sequel, but it's simple: Rio also grossed a far more impressive $341 million overseas. And since opening in Russia and Ukraine on March 20, Rio 2 has pulled in a whopping $125 million in just 14 international territories.
More than any other U.S. filmmaking operation today, Blue Sky is demonstrating the enormous power and sway the international market can have on Hollywood. But judging by the coverage (or lack thereof) of Blue Sky's films from most stateside media outlets, you could be forgiven for thinking of the studio as the RC Cola of feature animation, a third-tier operation without the cultural and commercial heft of Pixar, DreamWorks, and Disney. (Or, for that matter, the upstart Illumination Entertainment, which has basically only the Despicable Me movies and The Lorax to its name.)
It is true that none of Blue Sky's movies, which are distributed largely by 20th Century Fox, have made much of a box office impact in the U.S., not even the Ice Age movies, the studio's marquee franchise. Blue Sky's top grossing film domestically is the third installment in that franchise, 2009's Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, with $196.5 million. By contrast, eight DreamWorks films have made more in the U.S., and only three of 14 Pixar films have made less.
20th Century Fox / Blue Sky Studios
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