PETALING JAYA, Jan 6 — Animonsta Studios Sdn Bhd (Monsta) has decided to postpone the official release of its new animated feature Mechamato.
Monsta’s head of branding and marketing Faiz Zainal Abidin said that the movie launch will be postponed to the end of 2021, as the animation studio is concerned about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic if the movie is released at an earlier date.
“At first, we wanted to release it in March because Malaysia is expected to receive Covid-19 vaccines in February.
“However, after reconsideration, we decided that postponing the screening to a later date would be the best option,” Faiz told Berita Harian.
“After a lot of discussions, we decided that we should delay the screening until the end of the year at least.
“Mechamato is a family-oriented film and we have to select a suitable release date so that the entire family can watch it together without worrying about their safety.”
The Mechamato animated film was initially scheduled for release in November or December 2020 but was delayed due to the closure of cinemas nationwide in November last year.
The film is Monsta’s latest animated production which tells the story of Amato, a creative young boy who befriends a destroyer robot and is also the father of Monsta’s popular BoBoiBoy animated hero.
Faiz also said in the report that Monsta isn’t keen on opting for releasing the Mechamato film on media streaming services like Netflix and Astro First, as the company isn’t confident that the profits earned through these platforms could help cover the RM10 million it spent on production.
“We did our research and found that we wouldn’t be able to make a profit using streaming services as a lot of funds have already been channelled into the production of the film,” said Faiz.
“The highest profit margin on Astro First was for the film, Mael Totey, which only raked in RM7 million, compared to the RM30 million we recorded when we released BoBoiBoy Movie 2 in cinemas.”
He added that earlier plans to release the film before being followed by its animated series also had to be scrapped as the Mechamato television show is set to be aired in October this year, with screenings at the Asia-Pacific level in November on Cartoon Network.
“We already received approval from local and international channels, so we have to abide by those agreements.
“But what is more important is that the Mechamato series will now be known not only at the local level but at Asia-Pacific level as well, with the show set to be aired in countries such as Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand,” said Faiz.
“At the same time, we are also looking to highlight our productions to other countries as discussions with distributors in America and Europe are already underway.
“We want to see the Mechamato series accepted overseas.”
The Mechamato movie trailer was officially released four days ago and has garnered over one million views on Youtube.
Monsta has achieved considerable success of late for its animation productions, most notably being the release of the BoBoiBoy Movie in 2016 and BoBoiBoy Movie 2 (BBBM2) August in 2019.
BBBM2 captivated over 2.5 million viewers and collected RM30 million at the box office, making it one of the highest grossing films in Malaysian film history, while BoBoiBoy Movie raked in close to RM16 million.
BBBM2 also received a number of international nods at global film festivals such as nominations for Best Animated Film at the Florence Film Awards in Italy, Best Animation 3D Film at the New York Animation Film Awards 2020, and the Best Poster and Best Trailer categories at the Laurus Film Festival in Russia last year.
