Animated Films

LOS ANGELES—Add Walt Disney Co. DIS -0.01% ’s animation woes to Robert Iger’s to-do list.The company’s latest release, “Strange World,” this weekend became the second consecutive Disney animated offering to bomb at the box office, collecting a measly $18.6 million since opening Wednesday. That showing marks the second 2022 misfire from Disney, after this summer’s “Lightyear”—an unusual record for a company long considered a guaranteed…

They are on Walmart shelves, candy wrappers and dog costumes. They are in theme parks in Florida and Southern California. They have appeared on Amazon.com Inc. delivery boxes, chickpea snack bags and Tic-Tac containers. They have made cameos in countless Facebook memes, standing in for fans who want to express every conceivable emotion—from back-to-school excitement to calls to indict former President Donald Trump. People have…

Minions—the babbling, yellow, goggle-eyed stars of the “Despicable Me” animated movie franchise—have a history of rallying together to follow their hapless leaders. This weekend, it was kids and their parents who got in line, and in droves.Illumination Entertainment’s “Minions: The Rise of Gru” blew away initial box-office expectations to gross $108.5 million domestically in the strongest opening weekend for an animated feature film since before the pandemic, a heartening sign for Hollywood studios that had been unsure…