Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Beginning of a New Trend in American Animation?

The 2018 film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse made a bit under $400 million at the box office. Given the budget and expectations it was respectable, not spectacular--especially in comparison with the money made by both live-action superhero films (especially the consistently popular Spider-Man movies), and the animated films put out by studios like Disney, Disney-Pixar and Illumination (single films of theirs routinely raking in $1 billion or more at the box office in those same years).

This was also not too surprising--Americans tending to take their action-adventure in live-action form, while leaving splashy family films, especially comedies and musical comedies, to the animators.

The result is that it is interesting that Boxoffice Pro, in contrast with its response to the tracking of so many live-action superhero films this year, has been getting more bullish about the prospects of the 2018 movie as we approach the movie's launch (scheduled for this Friday). Estimating a far higher take suggestive of what only the live-action superhero films have tended to make (the high end of the range for the domestic gross is now $360 million), Shawn Robbins explicitly acknowledged that its trajectory "seems to be mimicking a typical Marvel film more than a traditional animated release without a dedicated fan base."

The figures, and the parallel, have me wondering--could Across the Spider-Verse be a milestone for American animation? The moment in which action-adventure in that form as a major theatrical draw arrives? When, just as in Japan, animated action movies adapting the most popular comic book stories around start to routinely top the box office?

There seem to be good reasons to think so. Americans seem to have become more accustomed to this kind of experience as anime and manga fans flock to the theaters to catch Japanese animated films of the type in growing numbers. (Consider, for example, how in 2021, as Hollywood failed miserably to attract crowds of the usual size, the Japanese blockbuster Demon Slayer opened to $21 million on the way to selling $50 million worth of tickets--almost what James Gunn's much-touted The Suicide Squad managed that summer.) Moreover, exploiting the possibilities of animation would seem a way to inject a bit of creativity, or at least novelty, into the well-worn superhero movie genre, and the well-worn American blockbuster generally (perhaps, while also saving on production costs). Indeed, the folks at Warner Bros. pontificating about 10-year plans for rebooting the DC Extended Universe, if really thinking that far ahead, should be paying particular attention to the possibility.

So far, though, I know of no reason to think they are doing so.