By almost any measurement — box office, stock market, public image — it’s been an annus horribilis for the DreamWorks Animation chief and the studio he built. The company’s latest big screen venture, “Penguins of Madagascar,” stumbled in its U.S. debut last week, earning $35 million over the five day Thanksgiving holiday. It had been expected to earn between $45 million to $48 million. In response, shares of DreamWorks plunged more than 9% on Monday morning.

“Movies are going to be the driving factor with their stock price and the movie business is often very hit or miss and they seem to have gotten it wrong several times now,” said Marla Backer, an analyst with Ascendiant Capital Markets.

The disappointing performance of the “Madagascar” spin-off underscores the vulnerability that DreamsWorks Animation faces as a publicly traded company that fields only two or three film releases annually. The company has tried to diversify by moving more heavily into television, new media and consumer products, but each time one of its movies opens, its stock is liable to rise or fall based on the result.

Among the company’s 2014 releases, “How to Train Your Dragon 2″ made $618.8 million, but “Mr. Peabody & Sherman” resulted in a $57 million write down. The film failures indicate that DreamWorks Animation’s approach to family fare, one that combines pop culture references, emotional uplift and a few fart jokes, may not be resonating as strongly as it once did.

At the same time, the animation market has grown more competitive, with Universal’s Illumination Entertainment and Fox’s Blue Sky Studios fielding hits such as “Despicable Me” and “Ice Age,” and Walt Disney Animation undergoing a renaissance with the likes of “Frozen” and “Big Hero 6.” Gone are the days where DreamWorks Animation and Pixar carved up the animation pie between themselves.

The need to get bigger and to guard against market fluctuations prompted Katzenberg to begin shopping around his company this year. That strategy backfired, however, when word of two potential mergers were leaked to the press, scuttling DreamWorks Animation’s potential sale to first Japanese tech giant SoftBank and later toymaker Hasbro. Each failed deal gave Katzenberg a whiff of desperation, damaging his clout on Wall Street.

Over the past year, DreamWorks Animation’s stock price has fallen steadily. It kicked off the year trading at $35.30 and opened Monday at $22.35.

It’s too early to write off “Penguins of Madagascar,” but with a production budget of $132 million plus tens of millions in promotion and advertising costs, it will lean heavily on foreign audiences in order to push it into the black. So far, the film has done respectable business abroad, earning $63 million, with several major territories left to open.

Should “Penguins of Madagascar” fail, it will become the fourth of DreamWorks Animation’s past six films to lose money. That was a fate that the studio had tried to avoid when it moved “Home,” an adaptation of the children’s book “The True Meaning of Smekday,” out of the Thanksgiving slot and into next year and replaced it with “Penguins.” The hope was that “Penguins,” with its ties to the “Madagascar” franchise, would be better able to compete during the competitive holiday.

The best thing working in “Penguins of Madagascar’s” favor is that there isn’t another major family film hitting until “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb” debuts on December 17. That gives DreamWorks Animation time to establish its film as the de facto choice for parents.

“As analysts we have a tendency to overreact a bit to opening numbers, and it is true that films in the holidays can play and have longer legs,” said Backer.

The problem is that DreamWorks Animation’s strategy is to mix original films with sequels and spin-offs to its core franchises. The failure of “Penguins,” which is a spin-off to the company’s blockbuster “Madagascar” series, exposes some cracks in that plan and raises questions about how much the company is worth.

“If someone is looking to buy this company, the value Jeffrey Katzenberg is going to get just took a haircut,” said Eric Wold, an analyst with B. Riley and Company.

With “Big Hero 6,” an obscure Marvel Comics title gives the Mouse House’s toon division just enough raw material to assemble its own superhero franchise, starring millions of robots — including one, a balloon-bellied virtual nurse named Baymax, that you’ll never forget. Co-directors Don Hall and Chris Williams borrow the character names and a few key details from their pulp source, but otherwise succeed in putting a thoroughly Disney spin on things, delivering appealing personalities, bright, peppy animation, positive life lessons and what looks like a world record for the sheer amount of hugging featured in a superhero movie. More male-skewing than “Frozen,” the relatively hip result should do big business for Disney, especially in Asian territories, with easy expansion possibilities via additional movies, comics or a TV series.

Set in a beautifully rendered, futuristic hybrid city called San Fransokyo — which combines familiar NorCal features, like steep hills, the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay, with skyscrapers, neon signs and characteristically Japanese architectural flourishes — “Big Hero 6” synthesizes American and Asian cultural sensibilities across the board. Displaying a special love for Japanese robotics, screenwriters Robert L. Baird, Daniel Gerson and Jordan Roberts integrate elements of manga, anime and science fiction into the very fabric of the computer-animated project, but also succumb to the same pitfalls faced by so many other superhero pics: Namely, after establishing its fresh and relatable origin story, the movie gets bogged down with a relatively generic villain’s power-hungry schemes.

Still, there’s enough that’s new and different about “Big Hero 6” to get excited about, especially for those still too young for Marvel’s more intense live-action fare. A couple of decades ago, Disney went out of its way to diversify its princess lineup, featuring characters such as Mulan and Pocahontas in culturally specific stories designed to reflect their unique backgrounds. “Big Hero 6” seems wonderfully color-blind by comparison, centering on a Japanese-American lead, 14-year-old Hiro Hamada (voiced with contagious enthusiasm by Ryan Potter), in a role that could have gone to a character of any race or gender.

Hiro is crazy-smart for a kid his age. An amateur inventor with a special interest in robotics, he graduated from high school at 13 and now spends his time hustling bigger mecha at underground bot-fighting competitions — a hobby that jumpstarts the high-energy story with a few “Real Steel”-style scenes early on. Older brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) wishes Hiro would pick something safer to occupy his time, arranging an impromptu tour of the university science lab in hopes that the teen might be tempted to enroll.

Pay special attention to the four inventors who work alongside Tadashi in the school lab, since they will soon join Hiro’s band of amateur crime-fighters. These misfits include cycling junkie GoGo Tamago (Jamie Chung); laser-blade innovator Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr.); chemical-reactions specialist Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez); and Fred (T.J. Miller), a shaggy-haired weirdo obsessed with Godzilla and other freak-of-nature phenomena. As a group, they come across less like the Avengers than the dorky members of Scooby-Doo’s mystery-solving squad.

So who’s the sixth member of Hiro’s gang of heroes? That would be Baymax, a robotic Healthcare Companion unlike any A.I. auds have previously encountered onscreen. (As voiced by “30 Rock’s” Scott Adsit, the character serves as a walking comedy routine — a throwback to the way Paul Reubens played things in “Flight of the Navigator” a generation earlier.) In a movie that boasts no shortage of creative design elements, Baymax is by far the most compelling, inspired by a new class of “soft robotics” being developed at Carnegie Mellon U., whose mechanical endoskeletons are completely hidden by puffy, nonthreatening vinyl.

With his squeaky inflatable suit and gentle demeanor, Baymax looks like a cross between the Marshmallow Man and a giant panda. Personality-wise, the benign bot represents an extreme case of Asimov’s first law: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” In his naive, uniquely amusing way, Baymax is hyper-attentive, almost to the point of smothering, dispensing lollipops and hugs as the situation demands. But he’s also a quick study, learning as he goes, which makes the movie feel a bit like “How to Train Your Robot” for the first hour or so, complete with high-flying bonding sequences that take us throughout the elaborate, densely detailed world of San Fransokyo — in dynamic stereoscopic 3D, no less.

Before his disappearance, Tadashi programmed Baymax to look after his younger brother. Now that Hiro is all alone (except for his oblivious Aunt Cass, played for grins by Maya Rudolph), the robot serves almost as a surrogate parental figure — albeit one that can be upgraded according to its child’s whims. The pic’s most entertaining sequences feature Hiro tinkering with his new gizmo, trying to take what looks like an embarrassing baby toy and toughen him up, whether that means updating Baymax’s database to include a full library of advanced karate moves or creating custom body armor to mask his harmless appearance.

Lately, Disney has been taking turns making toons for girls (“Tangled”) and toons for boys (“Wreck-It Ralph”), and though “Big Hero 6” falls squarely in the latter camp, Baymax is such an endearing character, it shouldn’t be hard to attract auds of both sexes. Still, given the emotional sincerity of the pic’s first half, it’s a shame the filmmakers felt obliged to resort to a testosterone-fueled battle with a less-than-special villain, whose identity comes as a surprise (but maybe not enough of one). What sets this bad guy apart is the fact that his “power” is derived from one of Hiro’s own inventions: a system of micro-bots that do their master’s bidding, resulting in a hypnotic, ever-evolving force to be reckoned with, a bit like “Terminator 2’s” liquid-metal shape-shifter or the gloopy black symbiote seen in “Spider-Man 3.”

The villain, who hides his identity behind a kabuki mask, and the members of Hiro’s wisecracking team all remain recognizable human characters throughout. They’re not suddenly blessed with imaginary new powers or miraculously transformed by gamma rays, like so many other Marvel types. Instead, the film eliminates the stigma of being a “nerd,” illustrating how college-level intelligence gave them the tools to make themselves special, boasting a few useful lessons on anger management and the futility of vengeance in the process.

By now, the Disney-Marvel universe is already filled to bursting with big heroes, and it’s reasonable to ask whether the world really needs six more, especially when all but Baymax feel like kids in high-end Halloween costumes. The movie hypes this new sextet’s introduction by blasting Fall Out Boy’s anthemic “Immortals” on the soundtrack (which employs a stock rock-music score, courtesy of Henry Jackman), but hasn’t entirely convinced us by the end that we need more adventures from these characters. Couldn’t the Mouse House focus on doing that “Incredibles” sequel first?

As an amuse bouche to the talky main attraction, “Big Hero 6″ will be accompanied in theaters by a virtually dialogue-free, six-minute short called “Feast.” In a fun twist, the film is told as a montage of meals, tracking a dozen years in the relationship between a Boston Terrier and his owner, as seen from the insatiably hungry dog’s perspective. Technically speaking, this is an experimental short, in its visual style and its narrative approach, and it takes a bit of time to get one’s bearings, but the emotional core is so strong that we can’t help choking up. If director Patrick Osborne can do that in six minutes with “Feast,” perhaps it’s fair to ask more of the feature that follows.

"Happy New Year" (HNY) is one of the most-hyped and highly-anticipated Bollywood movies of 2014. Ever since director Farah Khan announced it in October 2012, the film has been creating buzz in the media for all good reasons. After a long wait, the flick has been finally released in theatres overseas on 22 October. The film seems to have reached the viewers' expectations that it had created before its release.

Written by Farah Khan, "Happy New Year" is a heist drama film that revolves around the story of a team of six losers, who participate in a dance competition to rob the greatest diamond. Mayur Puri has penned the dialogues for the movie, which has been produced with a whopping budget of Rs 150 crore by Superstar Shah Rukh Khan's wife Gauri Khan.

Shah Rukh Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Sonu Sood, Boman Irani and Vivaan Shah have played the lead roles in "Happy New Year". They appear as fake dancers, who attempt the greatest diamond heist ever. The movie has Vishal Shekhar's soundtracks, John Stewart Eduri's background score, Manush Nandan's cinematography and Anand Subaya's editing.

The songs of "Happy New Year" have been successful in impressing the film goers. Its promos have created lot of curiosity among the viewers. The makers of the film have had massive promotions for the movie and their unique marketing strategies have soared up the audiences' expectations sky high.

Released in the international markets on Thursday, "Happy New Year" is getting positive response from the foreign audience. The viewers, who are watching the film in theatres overseas, are overwhelmed by its rich production values and lead actors' performances, Farah's engrossing screenplay in this multi-starrer film

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"The Maze Runner" which is distributed by 20th Century Fox was shown in Australia on Sept. 18, 2014, U.S. and Canadian theatres on Sept. 19, 2014 and New Zealand theatres on Sept. 25, 2014. It stars Dylan O'Brien (Thomas), Will Poulter (Gally), Kaya Scodelario (Teresa), Aml Ameen (Alby), Blake Cooper (Chuck) and Carl Greene (Glader). Here is a brief movie review of it including the best and worst moments of the film
"The Maze Runner" is based on James Dashner's best-selling novel of the same title. It is directed by Wes Ball. The said film is produced by Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Lee Stollman, Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey. The film's runtime is 113 minutes. Its main plot is about a group of boys including Thomas (O'Brien) and Gally (Poulter) who are living in the Glade which is adjacent to a wall that opens to a large maze. Thomas doesn't remember anything and he tries to recover bits and pieces of his memory as he tries to escape the labyrinth that he is trapped in.

"The Maze Runner" also features Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Newt), Ki Hong Lee (Minho), Jacob Latimore (Jeff), Patricia Clarkson (Ava Paige), Chris Sheffield (Ben), Joe Adler (Zart), Randall D. Cunningham (Clint), Dexter Darden (Fry Pan) and Alexander Flores (Win).

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes has held off competition from Hercules to top the UK box office for the second consecutive weekend.

The Matt Reeves-directed Apes sequel earned £3.7 million to secure the top spot ahead of Dwayne Johnson's latest release and horror sequel The Purge: Anarchy.


How to Train Your Dragon 2 sits at number four after five weeks on release, while Transformers: Age of Extinction rounds out the top five.

The only chart climber is Boyhood, now on its third weekend on release, which moves up a place to number seven.

Elsewhere, the chart sees new entries from family adventure Earth to Echo, Bollywood movie Kick and The House of Magic.

The UK box office top ten in full:

1. (1) Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - £3,752,511
2. (-) Hercules - £1,449,120
3. (-) The Purge: Anarchy - £1,165,143
4. (2) How to Train Your Dragon 2 - £990,959
5. (3) Transformers: Age of Extinction - £803,063
6. (-) Earth to Echo - £618,379
7. (8) Boyhood - £279,701
8. (-) Kick - £239,850
9. (6) Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie - £228,764
10. (-) The House of Magic - £223,047

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BEIJING - "Transformers: Age of Extinction," the fourth installment in the robot movie franchise, earned 1.97 billion yuan (about $317.2 million) on the Chinese mainland in its month-long run ending July 27.
The movie's ticket sales were close to the average market forecast of 2 billion yuan, the Beijing News reported Tuesday.

The paper reported that "Transformers 4" ended its run as scheduled. Though distributors tried to extend its screening, the cost of doing so discouraged them, it added.

Box office earnings for the Hollywood blockbuster have eclipsed those of James Cameron's fantasy "Avatar" to become the all-time top-grossing film on the Chinese mainland.

The film has been breaking records in China since its debut on June 27, including the biggest opening and the most successful opening weekend in the country.

Disney live-action film Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie, has debuted at the top of the North American box office, taking $70m (£41m).

The film, based on the villain from Sleeping Beauty, has given Jolie her biggest box office debut to date.

"The whole movie kind of rises and sets on her performance," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior analyst for box-office tracker Rentrak.

Last weekend's number one, X-Men: Days of Future Past, dropped to second.

It took $32.6 million (£19.4m).

The weekend's second highest new entry was Seth MacFarlane's Western comedy, A Million Ways to Die in the West, starring Liam Neeson, Charlize Theron and Amanda Seyfried.

But it was a weak opening - $17.1m (£10.2m) - when compared with McFarlane's Ted, which opened with $54.4m in 2012.

Despite its success, Maleficent could not match the financial power of Disney's other recent re-imagined fairytales, Alice in Wonderland - which opened with $116m in 2010 - and Oz the Great and Powerful, which took $79m in its debut weekend last year.

Maleficent, directed by Robert Stromber - the production designer on Alice in Wonderland and Oz the Great and Powerful,received mixed reviews from critics.

20th Century Fox tentpole X-Men: Days of Future Past took $43.82 million in its first full week in China, bringing its total to $83.14 million after 10 days, according to data from Beijing-based analyst group Entgroup.

Bryan Singer's critically acclaimed movie had 232,842 screenings and 7.21 million admissions for the week to June 1.The movie has been boosted in the world’s second largest film market by its Chinese star Fan Bingbing and a well-received visit by key cast.

PHOTOS: 'X-Men: Days of Future Past' Premiere: Jennifer Lawrence, Hugh Jackman Hit Black Carpet

The week includes International Children’s Day on June 1, which gave domestic animation titles a notable boost, but the impact of the Dragon Boat Festival public holiday on June 2 won't be clear until next week.Hong Kong crime thriller Overheard 3 took $24.10 million in its opening four days from 123,556 screenings and 4.4 million admissions.

Directed by Alan Mak and Felix Chong, Overheard 3 features Sean Lau, Louis Koo and Daniel Wu, who all featured in the original, as well as Ng Man-Tat, Zhou Xun, Gordon Lam and Michelle Ye.In third place in the box office charts was Zhang Yimou’s Coming Home, which took $7.96 million to bring its cumulative total to $41.43 million, from 98,227 screenings with 1.44 million admissions.

In fourth was the domestic animated feature Happy Little Submarines 4 – Adventure of Octopus, which took 4.88 million in its opening weekend.

PHOTOS: 'X-Men's' Ellen Page: Her Career in Pictures

This was followed by two other domestically produced animated features, Zhu Zhu Xia Zhi Yong Chuang Ju Ren Dao, which took $3.75 million in its first two days, and the domestically produced The Adventures of Sinbad 2014, which took $2.63 million in its first weekend.

In seventh place was The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which notched up another $1.98 million in China for a cumulative total of $93.92 million after 29 days.

Another Chinese toon was behind that, Magic Wonderland, which took $1.92 million in its opening weekend, followed by the horror movie Closed Doors Village, which took $510,000.

Rounding out the top 10 was The Great Hypnotist, which took another $500,000 for a cume of $44.05 million.

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Chennai: Animated film "Rio 2", which opened in cinemas worldwide Friday, has grossed Rs.5.7 crore in its opening weekend at the Indian box office, registering the second best opening for an animated film in the country.

"The fun family entertainer bagged Rs.5.7 crore gross (Rs.4 crore net), more than twice the opening of 'Rio 1' and the 3rd biggest opening for 2014 for any Hollywood film," read a statement from the film's production house Fox Star Studios.

"'Rio 2' has garnered the second biggest opening for an animation film after 'Ice Age 4' in India," added the statement.

"Rio 2" brings back the lovable, eccentric characters from the first part in an even wilder, rib tickling and more colourful adventure with voiceover by big names like Anne Hathway, Jesse Eisenberg and Jamie Foxx.

For the Hindi version, Bollywood stars Sonakshi Sinha and Imran Khan gave voiceover for main characters Jewel and Blu, respectively.

The Marvel machine continues to be a wonder at the box office, with “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” amassing a whammo $203.3 million worldwide this weekend, of which an estimated $96.2 million came from Stateside plexes, making it the largest domestic debut ever in April.

To date, “Winter Soldier” has raked in an overwhelming $300 million-plus global tally, with several overseas territories bowing the pic last weekend. The film now is playing in approximately 92% of the international marketplace.

In China, “Winter Soldier” scored the largest opening for a Disney-Marvel film with $39.2 million, which is 16% larger than “Iron Man 3.” Russia and Australia also each contributed No. 1 bows locally, grossing $7.4 million and $6 million, respectively.

The huge Stateside opening for “Winter Soldier,” which included a benchmark $9.6 million from Imax (with 9 of the film’s top 10-grossing theaters) and $6.5 million from other premium-large format screens, is nearly 50% larger than the original’s opening in 2011. The Herculean improvement is attributed mostly to the inundation of the Marvel brand over the last few years.

“Records aside, this is a testament to the momentum created within the Marvel universe for each of these characters to become something greater than themselves,” said Disney distribution topper Dave Hollis, adding that the film is well positioned during spring break to take advantage of an already strong word-of-mouth play.

“When you have the critical and fan response, it feels like we’re set up for an extraordinary run ahead,” Hollis said.

That said, “Captain America” was unable to save 3D, which contributed just 23% domestically this weekend (outside Imax and PLF screens).

In non-”Cap” B.O. news, Paramount’s “Noah” dropped to second place, with $17 million, down roughly 60%, a much steeper drop than desired for the costly tentpole. Still, the Biblical epic has cumed $72.3 million domestically in two weeks, with a solid global gross of $178.5 million.

At the specialty box office, Fox Searchlight’s V.I.P. “The Grand Budapest Hotel” continues to cross over reaching $33.2 million in its fifth frame. The film again landed in the top 10 with an estimated weekend gross of $6.3 million from 1,263 locations, the second-widest expansion for a Wes Anderson film.

Meanwhile, Lionsgate-Codeblack Entertainment’s Halle Berry psychological drama “Frankie & Alice” scored an underwhelming $2,047 per screen average from 171 locations after languishing on the shelf for more than a year. The film estimated a total $350,000 in three days.