Seth MacFarlane is all too familiar with criticism. At the same time, however, he knows success just as well, as evidenced by his domination of Fox’s Animation Domination and now by the record-setting success of his first foray into feature filmmaking, the R-rated original comedy Ted.
As Deadline reports, estimates have Ted‘s worldwide gross eclipsing the $467.5M mark of former record holder for top grossing R-rated original comedy, The Hangover. Ted has reached an estimated $469 million on the back of its roll-out in France, Belgium, and Switzerland. It opened at #2 or better in all three territories.
With releases in Malaysia, India, Japan, and Venezuela still to come, the last 4 territories remaining for the film, which is currently open in a total of 44, Ted figures to pad its record even more before the year is out.
And whatever your opinion of MacFarlane, worse things have happened than the much-maligned Family Guy creator making bank for an original film that many were pleasantly surprised by.
On one hand, it makes his pocket book deeper and weight in the industry even greater. On the other hand, though, it goes to show that there remains a large market for original properties such as Ted and that MacFarlane does have it in him to produce something even his haters and crotchety old critics can find worth in.
Maybe this’ll be the motivation he needs to gravitate away from producing seemingly endless and absurdly samey television shows and towards focusing his creative energies on fewer, but better, projects. Well, one can dream, can’t he?