This land, you see, is in a constant battle between vitality and rot. Tara has just chosen an heir - the aforementioned pod - on whom the life of the forest hedges. soon finds out when she is entrusted with a pod from Queen Tara (Beyonce Knowles), a dying, handholdable royal. On the human front, teenaged girl Mary Katherine (voiced by Amanda Seyfried), who prefers to go by "M.K." nowadays, makes the journey to the remote forest home of her nerdy, widowed, estranged scientist father (Jason Sudeikis), a man obsessed with proving that an advanced society of tiny little people exists. Loosely adapted from Joyce's 1996 book The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs, Epic explores two layers of life that intersect. Facing little direct competition for a month, Epic floundered, barely crossing the increasingly meaningless $100 M mark in North America and thus falling well short of the bar for success set by a reported $93 M production budget. This adventure from director Chris Wedge (the first Ice Age and Robots) and decorated children's author William Joyce ( Rise of the Guardians, Meet the Robinsons) opened on the traditionally prosperous Memorial Day Weekend and, despite a nearly 4,000-theater count and the now-standard 3D bump, could only swing a fourth place debut. The studio's latest original film, Epic, became its weakest performer to date both domestically and abroad. There are no concrete plans for a fifth movie in the flagship series just yet, but there is a financially lucrative case to be made for Blue Sky accepting a reputation as an Ice Age factory. The two most recent installments, not difficult to overlook stateside, have nonetheless been behemoths internationally, their global impact ranking on the order of a Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or Transformers episode. Worldwide is a different story their Ice Age sequels, issued in between original works about every three years, have done over 70 to 80 percent of their business in foreign markets. Domestically, they've never reached the tallest heights of Pixar and DreamWorks, having repeatedly approached but never eclipsed the $200 million mark. To date, Blue Sky has been the most consistent and one of the most fruitful players in the game. Outside of summer's smash hit Despicable Me 2 (Illumination) and solid performer Monsters University (Pixar), which both soared on pre-existing goodwill, the once unstoppable CG family comedy has struggled some, suggesting the market can only support so many films and studios of this sort. This year, box office grosses for animated features have been down. Since then, other serious competitors have turned up: Universal's Illumination Entertainment, Sony Pictures Animation, plus Disney Animation has gotten the knack of CGI. The success of Ice Age in 2002 made the East Coast company the third of its kind, following Pixar and DreamWorks. It's premature to claim that after one flop Blue Sky Studios is in danger of losing its status as one of the major forces in computer animation, but on an annual release schedule, one can never be sure.
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