Marcel the Shell With Shoes On Brings in $169K Opening on 6 Screens

The cutest little internet sensation moved to the big screen this weekend and earned a total of $170K this weekend. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On made its big screen debut on June 24, showing in only cinemas in New York and California and producing the largest t of the weekend with $28,267.

Audiences first encountered the lonesome shell in 2010, when comedian Jenny Slate dreamed up the iconic character out of boredom and created a short film centered on the eponymous shell. The feature film Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is drawn from that original short film, among others that followed on YouTube, and is also a stop-motion film. Slate’s and co-creator Dean Fleisher-Camp’s shorts surrounding the lovable, often lonely titular character have gained more than 50 million views on the video-sharing platform. The franchise also ventured into children’s books with a Marcel the Shell best-selling series.

The film is a mock-documentary of the viral little mollusk that originally went viral on YouTube in 2010. Within the next few weeks, Slate’s and Fleisher-Camp’s creation will move into five more cities – Chicago, Washington, D.C, Austin, San Francisco, and Boston – next weekend. By July 8, the little shell will be in the biggest ten markets in the country to start its rollout through the Summer months. Throughout its first three days the movie made $82,188 on Friday, $47,253 on Saturday, and a further $40,165 on Sunday to finish off the weekend with a total of $169,606.

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Marcel is a one-inched shell that lives with his Grandmother named Connie and their pet lint, Alan. The two of them were formerly members of a vast society of shells, but since an unexplained disaster wiped out their community, they are the lone shell survivors. When a documentary filmmaker, played by Fleischer-Camp, moves into an Airbnb and meets the titular shell, he resolves to help Marcel, eventually taking things to the internet. However, it brings Marcel millions of ardent admirers, but also puts the little shell in danger on a scale never before experienced and gives him a fresh chance to rediscover his long-lost relatives. It is an amusing and touching tale about finding connections in the most unexpected places.

Slate reprises her role as the voice of the tiny shell in the newly released full-feature film, with partner Fleisher-Camp directing. The entertainment company A24 distributes the animation. Producers of the shell-centric film include Elisabeth Holm, Andrew Goldman, Caroline Kaplan, Paul Mezey, Terry Leonard, Fleisher-Camp, and Slate, with executive producers Philipp Engelhorn, William Byerley, Nion McEvoy, George Rush, and Michael Raisler. The animated film is a collaborative production between Cinereach and Chiodo Bros. Productions. Kristen Lepore serves as animation director for Cinereach Productions and Stephen Chiodo as supervising animation director while Edward Chiodo is onboard Chiodo Bros. Productions.

In Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, a well-liked character makes his theatrical debut, and the little guy seems to be doing well on the big screen. Check out the trailer for the full-length animation below and find him in a theater near you when he moves into more cinemas throughout the Summer.