2019 film by Lino DiSalvo
Playmobil: The Movie is a 2019 live-action/animated adventure comedy film based on the German toy Playmobil. The film was directed by Lino DiSalvo (in his feature directorial debut) and written by Blaise Hemingway and the writing team of Greg Erb and Jason Oremland from an original story by DiSalvo. Featuring the voices of Anya Taylor-Joy, Jim Gaffigan, Gabriel Bateman, Adam Lambert, Kenan Thompson, Meghan Trainor, and Daniel Radcliffe, the plot follows a girl who tries to save her brother from a Playmobil world that the two are sucked into and becomes involved in the midst of a population-capturing scheme by Emperor Maximus.
Playmobil: The Movie premiered at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival on 10 June 2019, and was released in France on 7 August, in the United Kingdom on 9 August, and in the United States on 6 December. The film was panned by critics for being a perceived feature-length advertisement, with most criticisms directed to its poor storytelling, musical numbers, characters, tone, and worldbuilding problems, with several unfavourable comparisons to The Lego Movie (2014), although some praise focused on its animation and voice acting. The film was also a commercial failure, grossing only $16.3 million on a $40–75 million budget, with the worst opening weekend ever in the United States for a film playing in over 2,300 theaters.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.