In their latest quarterly investment letter Netflix has confirmed the viewership numbers for several of their titles released from April 1 to June 30 and in it revealed their most popular animated movie of all time was released in that window. The Mitchells vs. The Machines, an acquisition by Netflix from Sony Animation, became their most popular animated film, nabbing views from 53 million member households in its first 28 days of release. In that same timeframe the only new movies that brought in more views on the platform were the Kevin Hart-starring Fatherhood with 74 million views and Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead with 75 million views.
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“We launched our first original scripted TV series in 2012 and we’ve since expanded our original programming effort to many additional categories, from all over the world,” Netflix wrote in their shareholders letter. “Our goal is to be everyone’s first choice for entertainment because of the variety and quality of our titles. And despite the COVID-related production delays in 2020, we were able to deliver an exciting portfolio of titles in Q2’21 that exemplify this ambition.”
The Mitchells vs. The Machines is written and directed by Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe with The LEGO Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse creators Phil Lord and Chris Miller producing.
Like the Oscar winning Sony Pictures Animation movie, The Mitchells vs. The Machines is a hyper stylized piece of work and was actively influenced by the work previously done on Spider-Verse actively influenced what they did with the film.
“One of the amazing things about animation is that its only limit is the scope of the filmmaker’s imagination,” Miller said in the press notes for Mitchells. “It feels like only now do we have the technological tools to make it so that truly any visual style or language conceivable can be represented on screen, and we’re just at the beginning of a golden age of creativity. It’s kind of like when the Impressionists rejected hyper-realistic rules of art and suddenly an explosion of stylistic expression emerged, like Pointillism, Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism, etc. Animation can be the purest window into the mind of the filmmaker. Plus, in animation it’s a lot easier to get away with really dumb physical jokes.”
Adds Lord, “We’re medium agnostic really. Sometimes animation gives you the best chance to make a particular story something special.”
The Mitchells vs. The Machines stars Abbi Jacobson, Danny McBride Maya Rudolph, Alex Hirsch, Eric Andre, Fred Armisen, Charlyne Yi, and Olivia Colman.
