The Big Picture

• The Garfield Movie is generating buzz with a strong international debut, earning $36 million globally.
• Director Mark Dindal brings new life to the iconic character, with Chris Pratt voicing the lasagna-loving cat.
• With a lower production cost compared to past animated features, The Garfield Movie aims to attract family audiences.

Still a fortnight or so away from its stateside debut, Sony’s The Garfield Movie began its global roll-out earlier this month. Having played for two weekends internationally, the film has set the stage for its domestic debut on May 24, alongside Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. The Garfield Movie is the first animated offering of the summer, and will likely take over from Universal’s Kung Fu Panda 4 as the first choice for family audiences, until Pixar’s Inside Out 2 and Illumination’s Despicable Me 4 run rampage at the box office in June and July.

After two weekends in theaters, the film has grossed a grand total of $36 million from a handful of overseas locations, with the majority of the revenue coming from Mexico ($12.5 million). This weekend, The Garfield Movie debuted in three new territories, with Germany ($2.1 million) leading the pack; it will debut in South Korea, the U.K., and Australia next. The film serves as something of a cinematic reboot for the long-running comic strip, and is directed by Chicken Little’s Mark Dindal, and features Chris Pratt as the voice of the Monday-hating, lasagna-loving cat.

Pratt, of course, voiced the titular character in last year’s global smash hit The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which generated $1.3 billion worldwide, against a reported budget of $100 million. The Garfield Movie comes with a reported price tag of $60 million, which is on the lower end of the highly deflated production costs that studios have been assigning to animated features in the post-pandemic world. Animated films used to typically cost upwards of $150 million just some years ago, but all that changed recently, with hits such as Kung Fu Panda 4, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Minions: The Rise of Gru all being produced for $100 million or less.

Created by Jim Davis, Garfield is an iconic character, and was previously featured in a couple of live-action/animation hybrid movies — Garfield: The Movie ($208 million worldwide) and Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties ($143 million worldwide). It’s still too early to gauge The Garfield Movie’s quality; it holds a 67% approval rating on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, but based on only six reviews. But as has been observed with animated films, they don’t always have to deliver peak Pixar-level quality to attract audiences. Often, parents are happy to take their kids to the most diverting movie available, which explains the relative success of Sing 2 and Trolls Band Together in the post-pandemic era.

Pratt has been sort of omnipresent in recent years; in addition to his work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Jurassic World trilogy, he also led the defunct Lego Movie series, which he appears to have successfully replaced with two new animated franchises. He also stars in Prime Video’s The Terminal List, and will next be seen in the Russo brothers’ Electric State. The Garfield Movie also features the voices of Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Ving Rhames, Nicholas Hoult, Cecily Strong and others. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates closer to the film’s domestic debut on May 24.