When “Monster Hunt” was released in 2015, it made box-office records in China by being the highest-grossing film shown in the Asian giant. However, the movie was a major flop when exhibited in the U.S.
When it opened, the movie earned only $21,000 in ticket sales on its opening weekend, reported Fortune. After its release in July in China, the film grossed $392 million and broke the record of the American movie “Furious 7.” It also earned the producers a substantial profit since “Monster Hunt” was produced at the cost of only $50 million.
But there are doubts that China padded the figures for the movie, although one reason why it earned that much was it was shown in mid-summer when it had no competition from foreign movies.
Besides being shown in only about 40 cinemas across the U.S., the film – which averaged only $468 per movie house – also got mixed reviews among English-speaking critics. To have more appeal to American viewers, FilmRise, the producer, edited the movie and released two versions. One was in Mandarin language with English subtitles, and the other was dubbed in English.
Part of the lack of appeal of the film could be its action-comedy plot, described as confusing, and the combination of human actors with monsters that were generated by the computer. Raman Hui, a veteran animator in Hollywood who was part of the team behind the successful “Shrek” franchise, directed the film.
Hui said he was largely influenced in his craft by Dreanworks as well as famous American directors such as Steven Spielberg and James Cameron, reported Inverse. In designing the monsters, Hui said that “We didn’t want them to just be scary monsters that just scream and kill people. We want them to be able to act.”
Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst of Rentrak, said that the distributors were aware that its title “had much more resonance in China and overseas territories than it would be here.” Moreover, the distributors did not expect “Monster Hunt” to be a monster hit in the U.S., not even close to how much the movie earned in China.