The Lowest-Grossing DreamWorks Animation Movie Ever Will Shock You

Dog Man marks the 48th theatrical feature produced by DreamWorks Animation since October 1998, when Antz officially kicked off the animation label. Over its history, DreamWorks Animation has experienced many famous box office highs. Most notably, 2004’s Shrek 2 grossed $441 million domestically, a gargantuan sum that made it the biggest animated feature in North America for over a decade. Even beyond that green and grumpy ogre, DreamWorks Animation has experienced major moneymakers in the form of further titles like The Wild Robot, the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, and the various Kung Fu Panda movies.

Even with all this financial prosperity, DreamWorks Animation has experienced its fair share of box office misfires. Titles like Mr. Peabody & Sherman and The Penguins of Madagascar lost tens of millions upon release, while more recent projects like Spirit Untamed missed financial expectations. Among all its theatrical releases, though, one stands out beneath all other as the lowest-grossing DreamWorks Animation feature ever. That title belongs to Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, a June 2023 movie already forgotten by most audiences.

What on Earth Is Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken?

Opening in theaters on June 30, 2023, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken chronicled the titular teenager (voiced by Lana Condor) trying to pass herself off as a normal human high-schooler in a seaside town. Ruby Gillman is, of course, a Kraken, which constantly complicates her life. Getting superpowers ingrained into her lady Kraken DNA and striking up a friendship with a popular girl mermaid (the mortal enemy of the Kraken) doesn’t help matters. It’s all a mixture of Luca, any high school comedy, and, at least in its finale, a kaiju movie.

Released over the 4th of July weekend that fellow Universal-owned animation outfit Illumination had utilized as a go-to launchpad for Despicable Me titles, there were grand ambitions to transform Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken into a box office bonanza. Instead, it absolutely cratered domestically. Ruby Gillman only grossed $15.7 million in North America, dethroning Spirit Untamed’s $17.7 million gross as the lowest-grossing DreamWorks Animation title ever in this marketplace. Astonishingly, Spirit Untamed cost less than half of Ruby Gillman’s $70 million budget and opened as one of the first theatrical animated family movies after theaters closed in March 2020 for COVID-19.

Ruby Gillman, meanwhile, dropped in the middle of a thriving summer moviegoing season with no theater closures or COVID seating restrictions in sight. Ironically, debuting in such a competitive stretch of summertime cinema served as its downfall. Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken opened the same month as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Elemental. If family audiences wanted an animated movie, there were plenty of other more high-profile options (and better-reviewed) options in the marketplace.

Plus, Universal’s awkward decision to not fully confirm Ruby Gillman even existed until three months before its release ensured this title couldn’t pick up momentum among the general public. Anything that could go wrong here did.

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Ruby Gillman Was Not the First 4th of July DreamWorks Bomb

Strangely, this was not the first time a DreamWorks Animation title bit the dust over the lucrative 4th of July weekend. 20 years to the weekend Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken debuted, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas opened in theaters. This feature only grossed $26.48 million domestically, a disastrous haul that put the entire DreamWorks company into financial peril. With this gross, hand-drawn animated features like Sinbad at DreamWorks were officially dead. To boot, Sinbad was a domestic box office nadir that no other subsequent DreamWorks Animation would produce until Spirit Untamed.

These parallels don’t indicate that DreamWorks Animation movies are inherently doomed if they open the 4th of July weekend. However, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, like Sinbad 20 years earlier, reaffirmed that not even the most “promising” holiday weekend can save a motion picture that audiences are disinterested in. Ruby Gillman looked thoroughly generic in its promotional campaign, which led to audiences giving it the cold shoulder. Meanwhile, other DreamWorks projects like The Wild Robot and How to Train Your Dragon captured people’s imaginations and financially flourished even though they opened outside of summertime.

The sheer gulf in domestic grosses between the likes of Shrek 2 and Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken also reflects the reality of being a studio like DreamWorks Animation that produces so many animated movies annually. When you’re taking so many up at bat, inevitably, you’re going to have some embarrassing strike-outs to accompany those home runs. Still, nobody involved in Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken could’ve imagined this feature would make the absolute worst kind of box office history for the outfit behind Dog Man.

Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is now streaming on Peacock.