Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero

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    [Total: 34 Average: 3.7]
  • Directed By: Richard Lanni
  • Written By: Richard Lanni, Mike Stokey
  • Release Date: April 13, 2018
  • Domestic Distributor: Fun Academy
  • Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Logan Lerman, Gérard Depardieu

Box Office Info:
Budget: $22 million Financed by: Fun Academy
Domestic Box Office: $4,015,935 Overseas Box Office: $485,130


The Irish corporation Labyrinth Media & Publishing developed an American subsidiary called Fun Academy and their first theatrical feature was the animated Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero.  Fun Academy has focused its patriotic projects on America’s involvement in wars, which is not very fun of the Fun Academy.  The budget for Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero was a modest $22 million and the financing was put together by Fun Academy, which courted private investors and relied on tax rebates.   Fun Academy was originally searching for a domestic distributor for the picture, but eventually announced that they would handle the theatrical release.

Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero was dated for April 13, 2018 and bowed against Rampage, Truth Or Dare and funny enough, the wide expansion of Isle Of Dogs.  Tracking was pointing to a $2M opening, which was expected since Fun Academy did not advertise the movie on TV to kids and instead had a promotional partnership with The U.S. World War I Centennial Commission — which is about the last place on earth this movie’s core demographic would ever go on their own accord.

Reviews were lukewarm and Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero was booked into 1,633 empty locations, where it pulled in $1,164,154 with a dreadful $713 per screen average.  Even with an A cinemascore from auds, attendance was cut in half the following weekend, where it declined 50.2% to $579,526 and then promptly lost most of its theater count.  The domestic run closed with a mere $4,015,935.

The patriotic American theme predictably did not resonate in any offshore market and it saw a fleeting theatrical release in a few countries to all of $485,130.

19 Comments

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  1. I saw it a while ago, not bad, but the whole movie looks like a cutscene from a PS2 game!

    Not surprised it didn’t do well in foreign markets. Nothing is more obnoxious than watching Americans pat themselves on the back for 90 mintutes.

  2. This movie gives me “Valiant” vibes because I don’t see how this movie could possibly recoup its budget at the box office. Young children aren’t interested in decades-ago wars, even with focus on cute animals.

  3. The film is finally going to get a home media release… …in the month of NOVEMBER, of all things. And remember how Universal(from what I could tell) dumped the home media release of “Spark” with no advertising or promotion and a hard to find release, due to the abysmal box office results? That’s NOTHING from how the distributor(Fun Academy) is going to release the film on home media. From releasing it on it’s own WEBSITE only. And that was a surprise, since I thought the film WASN’T going to have a HOME MEDIA RELEASE at all. See

  4. It’s a total shame this flopped. It’s leagues better than that Sherlock Gnomes crap. That one didn’t do well at the box office either so I guess parents won’t take their kids to everything that appeals to the lowest common denominator.

  5. This is a really good family movie.It seems that everyone who watched it enjoyed it.The limited and poor promotion of the film definitely hurt its box office numbers.

  6. I only knew this was coming out because I work at a movie theater. It looks cute, and it’s rare to see WWI movies at all. The movie’s official Facebook page has acknowledged the low box office, and is trying to convince people to “stand up for Stubby.” Unfortunately, it’s hard to feel sorry for them when they didn’t really advertise this at all. I doubt the movie ever would’ve been a monster success, but the distributor absolutely failed this movie.

    • At least there was ONE film that was set in WWI(World War 1) that became a huge hit at the box office(and with critics as well)! I’m talking about “Wonder Woman”, of course!

  7. I have a few words to say about this film. I have NO IDEA this even existed. The only reason I knew this film existed was when I saw the trailer for this before “Paddington 2”. It’s clear this film was going to flop from the lack of advertising alone. And it did. Sorry.

    • At least that was better than when Open Road(now Global Road) quietly disposed “Spark: A Space Tail” into 365 theaters(in LIMITED RELEASE) that same week last year, when “The Fate Of The Furious” had a huge amount of the box office to itself(both in the USA and overseas, breaking the worldwide record(530 million dollars) until “Avengers: Infinity War” destroyed that record by 100 million(630 million dollars)(and that was just one of the many box office records it broke) earlier this year), and “The Boss Baby” and the “Beauty and the Beast” remake were still taking family audiences(and even “Smurfs: The Lost Village” was taking some family audiences as well), and ended up making only 800 THOUSAND DOLLARS WORLDWIDE on an estimated 40 million dollar budget. At least this film was able to have a thousand theater(wide release) and make a million dollars, BUT THAT REALLY ISN’T SAYING MUCH.

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