How Roblox Is Facilitating Animated Films’ Domination of 2024 Box Office
Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” brought the docile summer box office roaring back to life last weekend when it raked in more than $150 million domestically.
The biggest opening since last summer’s “Barbie,” “Inside Out 2’s” instant success might seem spontaneous to some.
However, the comeback for animated family cinema had already been set in motion by “Kung Fu Panda 4” in March — with some big help from Roblox.
“Kung Fu Panda 4 Obby” debuted on Roblox three weeks ahead of the film’s March 8 release, which closed its run at nearly $200 million stateside and close to $550 million globally, making it one of 2024’s best films. Another March release, “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” saw nearly identical turnout and was also preceded by a promotional event on Roblox, as was “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.”
I joined Roblox head of entertainment partnerships Todd Lichten, Universal Pictures VP of global digital marketing Nicole Schlegel and Sawhorse Productions co-founder and head of interactive Nic Hill at AWE USA 2024 Tuesday to discuss the “Kung Fu Panda” collaboration and other partner events on Roblox.
“It had been a while since the last ‘Kung Fu Panda’ movie, and some kids maybe weren’t born yet or were very little,” said Schlegel. “One of the big ways to reach younger audiences, especially kids, is in the gaming space.”
A huge chunk of the nearly 78 million daily active users on Roblox are children, making the platform a vital way for Hollywood studios to reach the more elusive younger demographics, which are less likely to see ads on TV.
Third-party partner Sawhorse was tasked with designing “Kung Fu Panda 4 Obby” for Universal, using the Roblox platform and its tools to build out a cooperative, two-player obstacle course around “Kung Fu Panda” that rewarded players with exclusive in-game items tied to the event, most notably a new emote.
“Obby” is Roblox slang for obstacle courses on the platform, while emotes are animations players can carry out that are customary for most competitive video games.
“Our team kind of acts as an agency to figure out the design on how we approach this and how we would roll this out over the launch of the campaign to really maximize engagement and maybe blow up on [Roblox],” said Hill.
While accessing revenue from in-game spending, or microtransactions, is often a primary goal for outside partners in setting up timed events and content hubs on Roblox, the items associated with the Obby experience were free for players who simply completed the experience, underscoring the faith studios such as Universal and DreamWorks have in the promotional power of Roblox.
“With time, franchisees can take over and build a more sustained strategy,” said Lichten. “There’s a closed beta right now for ‘Shrek.’”
Per Schlegel, Universal’s marketing team values gaming spaces just as much for adult audiences, having previously tasked Twitch streamers with helping to promote war film “1917” a few years ago and partnered with Meta Quest to transport Jordan Peele into the Horizon Worlds app to show off the universe of 2022’s “Nope” directly to fans.
But reaching younger viewers remains a top priority for the theatrical market, which has been facing difficulties from a lack of film output this year due to last year’s Hollywood strikes, a hurdle that has hindered positive recovery from the impact lockdowns had on theaters.
“We want that nag factor. We want kids to want to be aware of movies coming out and then nag their parents,” said Schlegel.
In that respect, the ripple effect of the success of “Kung Fu Panda 4” has set up summer to be dominated by animated films. While May’s “IF” and “The Garfield Movie” had soft starts, the former has since passed $100 milllion domestically and is Paramount’s top-grossing film of the year so far, while the latter managed to beat “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” in its first two weekends.
Audiences were well primed for Pixar’s triumphant return to tentpole status through “Inside Out 2,” following 2022’s lackluster “Lightyear” and a streaming pivot that had seen three films skip theaters for Disney+.
All of this points to great turnout for Universal’s “Despicable Me 4,” which already has its own Obby experience on Roblox ahead of the film’s July 3 release, setting up the robust creator economy on Roblox to further aid in drumming up hype for the movie as creators interact with its counterpart on the platform.
“There’s such synergy between a gaming platform or open-communication platform like Roblox and YouTube,” said Lichten.
