Everyone knows the Addams Family is creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky, altogether ooky, but now we can add “enduring” to the eerie family’s list of descriptors. The characters originated in a comic strip in the 1930s before making the jump to live-action in a popular 1960s sitcom and hopping into two live-action feature films in the ’90s, but the brand new animated film has already proven popular enough to warrant a theatrical sequel.
MGM and United Artists Releasing are officially going full steam ahead with The Addams Family 2, which is scheduled to ooze into theaters in October 2021.
According to Deadline, The Addams Family 2 has already been set for an October 22, 2021 release date, making it the first movie to stake a claim on that weekend. The outlet reports that the star-studded The Addams Family theatrical animated feature which just debuted on Friday has already pulled in $35 million in its first four days – including yesterday, which was a holiday for nearly half of American K-12 schools.
The fact that an animated family movie with a $40 million budget beat out Will Smith’s Gemini Man at the box office and nearly made its whole budget back in one weekend may seem impressive, but Deadline also reports that “MGM launched the movie like an event pic with a $150M global promotional partner campaign, the largest outside their 007 franchise,” so it still has a long way to go before it breaks even. Still, the number crunchers at the studio are evidently impressed enough that they’ve put a sequel on the fast track. Four of the top five highest-grossing animated films listed on BoxOfficeMojo are sequels (the only non-sequel is Jon Favreau’s The Lion King); MGM is likely expecting even higher returns next time around.
Even though The Addams Family started out strong at the box office, it’s been roundly rejected by many critics. The film currently holds a 39% on Rotten Tomatoes, and in /Film’s review, writer Josh Spiegel said the movie carries “the unmistakable, unavoidable whiff of cinematic leftovers.” Here’s an excerpt:
Some elements of The Addams Family are charming enough to suggest that these characters stand the test of time. But too much of the new animated film — which, all things considered, doesn’t look nearly impressive enough to watch on a big screen compared to a streaming service in a few months’ time — is so heavily inspired by its predecessors that you’re better off watching them instead.
But hey, at least it has a great cast that includes Charlize Theron (Morticia), Oscar Isaac (Gomez), Chloe Grace Moretz (Wednesday), Finn Wolfhard (Pugsley), Nick Kroll (Uncle Fester), Snoop Dogg (Itt), Bette Midler (Grandma), Allison Janney (Margaux Needler), Martin Short (Grandpa Frump), and Catherine O’Hara (Grandma Frump). We expect them all to return for the sequel, along with directors Conrad Vernon & Greg Tiernan (Sausage Party), although there hasn’t been any confirmation of their participation in the follow-up just yet.
The post Snap Snap: ‘The Addams Family 2’ is Coming to Theaters in 2021 appeared first on /Film.