January isn't quite the toxic cinematic wasteland it's cracked up to be. For sure, studios tend to drop weaker titles and schlockier features in this month that's in between big holidays. However, if you don't live in New York and Los Angeles, many of the biggest arthouse titles are just now coming to your local multiplex in January. Movies like Silence, Selma, and Inside Llewyn Davis (just to name a few contemporary titles) all went into 600+ theaters in a month more known for The Devil Inside and Uwe Boll directorial efforts.
Still, if there is one fixture of this month that's undeniably (largely) crummy, it's the family movies that tend to open on one specific January weekend. Over the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. weekend frame, Hollywood typically unleashes dire family movies that wouldn't have a prayer of success anywhere else. As if America hasn't desecrated MLK's memory enough!
The domination of this type of movie over MLK weekend can be traced largely to one Disney movie: Snow Dogs. That infamous Cuba Gooding Jr. star vehicle featured the titular pooches talking up a storm in its ad campaign...only for the dogs to remain voiceless in the final film. Deceptive marketing didn't steer audiences away from the title, though. Given that December 2001 hadn't produced a massive $100+ million family movie domestic grosser, family audiences were hankering for something to get them out of the house. Thus, Snow Dogs became the de facto motion picture of choice for a key, lucrative market.
Suddenly, a new window for family movies opened up. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer especially took notice of Snow Dogs as a model for a troubled R-rated Australian comedy that was trapped in post-production. After Dogs, Bruckheimer and the feature's team overhauled this property into the PG-rated Kangaroo Jack, complete with making sure the kangaroo briefly became a chatty CG character. The result was January 2003's biggest movie by a considerable margin with a $66.93 million domestic cume. A new strategy was born. Subpar family movies that couldn't make it anywhere else on the calendar could open over MLK weekend and (thanks to a dearth of competition) make a pretty penny.
By January 2005, two major family movies, Racing Stripes and Are We There Yet?, were launched in January (only the former opened over MLK weekend). A month once devoid of family features was now housing multiple motion pictures targeting this demographic. 2006's Hoodwinked! chalked up another $50+ million domestic performer for January family films, though it would take another three years for the holiday weekend's biggest kid-friendly success story. As the end of the 2000s approached, Paul Blart: Mall Cop became a box office phenomenon opening over 2009's MLK weekend.
Impressively, that same weekend housed another family movie hit, Hotel for Dogs (canine films do well in January, I guess). With $73 million domestically, Hotel for Dogs outgrossed Kangaroo Jack despite direct Paul Blart competition. Tooth Fairy was 2010's foray into January family films (though it didn't open over MLK weekend), while Beauty and the Beast 3D dropped over MLK weekend 2012. Save for The Nut Job's terrific $19 million debut over MLK weekend 2014, though, Hollywood began abandoning this January frame as a family movie launchpad after 2012. The only mid-to-late-2010s exceptions are the first two Paddington films. Otherwise, MLK 2019 and 2016 were devoid of major family movie newcomers.
This void isn't surprising, given the shifts happening in Hollywood at the time. Major American studios were shifting towards making fewer, but more expensive movies. With this strategy alteration, fewer (if any) mid-budget live-action family films were getting made. What family features were still produced were so costly that they couldn't rely on box office performances on par with Snow Dogs and Hotel for Dogs to get by. While the two Paddington films (particularly the first hit feature) did respectable numbers in this frame, Dolittle dropping over MLK weekend 2020 was like an admission of pre-release defeat rather than a sign that this Robert Downey Jr. star vehicle was the next Paul Blart: Mall Cop.
Hastening the decline of the MLK weekend family movie was a little title by the name of The LEGO Movie. A month after the dismal Nut Job ransacked $50+ million from North American audiences, The LEGO Movie shattered expectations with a $257 million domestic cume. That comedy opened over February 2014's first weekend, or one week before the three-day President's Day weekend holiday. Suddenly, a new corridor for launching family features in the first two months of the year opened up. To boot, it could produce megahits right in line with Hollywood's "bigger=better" mantra.
For the major studios, it wasn't even a question of whether or not they wanted a Snow Dogs or LEGO Movie in terms of box office numbers. MLK weekend quickly became a ghost town in the late 2010s (save for Paddington 2) while the pre-President's Day weekend housed The LEGO Batman Movie and Peter Rabbit. In 2020, Sonic the Hedgehog (opening over the President's Day weekend frame) did circles around MLK weekend family movie Dolittle, a sign of how much baton had been passed when it came to family movie scheduling.
There's been no real attempt in the 2020s (thus far) to revive the MLK weekend family movie. Last year, Paddington in Peru even shifted its U.S. release date from January 17, 2025 to February 14, 2025. Even that marmalade enthusiast has abandoned the timeframe that he once dominated. For 2026, the only new MLK weekend family movie is Charlie the Wonderdog (somehow starring Owen Wilson). Given that Wonderdog's distributor has never released a movie that's grossed over $4.3 million domestically, I doubt it's going to leave much of a box office mark. Universal is also putting Madagascar back into a little over 1,000 theaters. Neither is exactly Kangaroo Jack 2.0 in terms of box office potential.
The kind of family films that once thrived theatrically over this holiday, like dog-centric movies or Kevin James star vehicles, are now (if they even get made at all) dropping on Netflix and Prime Video. Major Hollywood studios won't make them period and the ones that do get created head to the small screen. No wonder this weekend's now such a non-starter for family movies at the box office. But hey, at least this holiday weekend's cinematic offerings did give the world Monster Trucks. Yes, Creech's cinematic debut hit theaters on January 13, 2017 after countless delays, and Paramount Pictures wrote down the film as a massive box office bomb (how rude to do that before its debut). Go away, Kangaroo Jack. Sayanora, deceptive Snow Dogs canine. Sorry, snarky houseflies from Racing Stripes. Creech is the champion of January family movie cinema. She may not have done much at the box office, but her artistry stands heads and shoulders above The Nut Job and its ilk. Once more, into the Creech, as they say.
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