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The Croods 2

on/Universal’s The Croods: A New Age led the weekend in China with a $19.2M debut, outpacing local titles One Second and Caught In Time as it got a huge Saturday boost. This is the third best bow for a studio movie in the Middle Kingdom during the pandemic era — behind Tenet (which topped $300M overseas this session) and Mulan. In total, the sequel opened in seven offshore markets for a combined $20.8M at the international box office. There were also No. 1 starts in Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and the UAE. The worldwide opening estimate including domestic is $35M.

This is a solid start for the animated film that comes seven years after the original. Directed by Joel Crawford, it has strong word of mouth in China (9.1 on Maoyan and Taopiaopiao and 8.2 on Douban). Play increased by 191% from Friday to Saturday when it took in more than one-third of the market’s box office. Sunday saw just a 15% decrease from the previous day.

The comedic, paleolithic adventures of DreamWorks Animation’s favorite Stone Age family, The Croods, won three awards for its animation - two of those for character animation - following its 2013 release. Seven years later, Eep, Grug, Ugga, Guy, Thunk and Gran Crood have returned in The Croods: A New Age, now showing in theaters, with not only a new world to explore and a new family to collide with, but also sporting new character animation, helmed by long-time DreamWorks character animator Jakob Jensen.

Jensen, a Denmark native, started out as Guy’s lead animator on the first film, for which he won an Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Character Animation in a Feature Production. While he’s immensely proud of the aesthetics for the characters he’s known and loved for over a decade, Jensen says the newer and brighter world in The Croods’ sequel, as well as the larger emphasis on comedy over drama, called for a revamp in character animation.

Working closely with director Joel Crawford to analyze and review each shot and sequence, Jensen, having done character animation for How to Train Your Dragon and animation supervising on Astro Boy, worked as the link between Crawford and the animation team; he sought to understand each animator’s sensibilities, giving notes and offering insight during production on The Croods: A New Age to bring cohesive performances to the screen. While the job typically leaves little time for doing one's own animation, Jensen continued to lead the charge on Guy’s development, using his free hours to tend to the animation of his familiar, fictional friend.

And friendship, along with family, was a theme throughout production on the second instalment of the caveman family’s explorative feats. We recently got the chance to talk with Jensen about not only the new character looks and production challenges the film faced over the last seven years, but also how the tight-knit family dynamic among the production team helped inform the animation and overall vision for the film.