Earlier this week, George Lucas’ animated fantasy Strange Magic flew into theatres across North America, and ended up with a box office record. However, that record isn’t as glamorous as some people would expect.

"Nobody came to our party?"

The computer animated comedy musical, which was distributed by Disney under the Touchstone Pictures banner, earned a dismal $5.5 million on its opening weekend at the box office. This officially makes Strange Magic the worst ever opening for an animated feature playing in over 3,000 theatres, beating previous record holders like The Wild Thornberrys Movie, and Quest for Camelot. The film’s budget is currently unknown, but the results do indicate that Disney will lose a large chunk of money from it.

Along with the poor box office results, critics have outright panned the film for its messy storytelling and lack of originality. Variety described the film as “a thoroughly derivative and unengaging fantasy” while TheWrap said that “Strange Magic [is] perhaps the worst animated feature ever to come out of Disney” and that “it’ll make you nostalgic for Jar Jar Binks.” Animation critic AniMat considered it to be “horrible” with “one of the most terribly-written stories in an animated feature”.

Strange Magic was animated as a collaboration between Lucasfilm Animation Singapore and Industrial Light & Magic. The story came from George Lucas with multi-Oscar-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom being the director of the film.

News source: Cartoon Brew