Hotel Transylvania 2

Plot

Seven years after the first film, Mavis (Selena Gomez) and her new fiancé Johnny (Andy Samberg) are finally married, with the approval of her father Dracula (Adam Sandler), and the world becomes aware of (and unfazed by) the existence of monsters. Mavis later reveals to Drac that she is pregnant and a year later, she gives birth to a baby boy named Dennis (Asher Blinkoff), who later befriends Wayne's daughter Winnie (who has a crush on Dennis) (Sadie Sandler). Nearing his fifth birthday, Dennis has yet to grow his fangs and Drac worries that his grandson might not gain vampire powers. Noticing the dangers of Transylvania, Mavis starts to consider raising Dennis where Johnny grew up, much to Drac's disapproval.

Drac tells Johnny (who does not want to leave the hotel either) to bring Mavis to California to visit his parents, Mike (Nick Offerman) and Linda (Megan Mullally), but to make sure to keep her distracted so that she will not move, leaving Drac to "babysit" Dennis. Drac enlists his friends, Frank (Kevin James), Wayne the werewolf (Steve Buscemi), Griffin the Invisible Man (David Spade), Murray the mummy (Keegan-Michael Key) and Blobby the Blob (Jonny Solomon) to help train Dennis to become a monster, to no avail.

Drac takes Dennis to his childhood summer camp, Camp Winnepacaca, where he learned to hone his vampire abilities and discovers that the camp is safer than it was when he went there. Drac stubbornly believes Dennis is a "late fanger", so he hurls Dennis from a tall, unstable tower to pressure the boy's transformation into a bat. Dennis does not transform, and Dracula has to fly and rescue him at the last second. The stunt is filmed by the campers and uploaded to the Internet, which eventually reaches Mavis and Johnny.

Mavis angrily transforms into a bat to fly her and Johnny back to Transylvania. Drac and his friends reach the hotel a couple of seconds after Mavis. She confronts her father for putting Dennis in grave danger and his inability to accept that he is human. She states she will move out of the hotel after Dennis' fifth birthday the following Wednesday. Drac hangs his head with deep guilt.

Mavis invites Vlad (Mel Brooks), her grandfather and Drac's father, to Dennis' birthday party. As Vlad is much worse than he was when it comes to humans, Drac tells Johnny to have the human party-goers disguise themselves as monsters. Vlad receives the invitation and arrives with his monstrous bat-like servant Bela (Rob Riggle) to meet his great-grandson for the first time. Meeting him, he believes that fear will cause Dennis' fangs to sprout and possesses a stage performer dressed as Dennis's favorite television monster, "Kakie the Cake Monster", to scare Dennis, but Drac shields his grandson at the last moment and exposes the deception to Vlad, who is outraged that Drac has accepted humans as guests in his hotel. Drac confronts his father about how humans are different now. Mavis becomes upset with her grandfather's behavior.

While the family argues, Dennis sadly flees the hotel and enters the forest with Winnie in tow, hiding in her treehouse. They are attacked by Bela, who mistakes Dennis for a human. When Bela injures Winnie and threatens to destroy the hotel, Dennis' anger causes him to instantly grow his fangs and his vampire abilities manifest. He begins to fight Bela, who calls his giant-bat minions. Drac, Mavis, Dennis, Johnny, the rest of the monsters and Johnny's family team up to defeat his minions. A livid Bela then attempts to kill Johnny himself with a stake. Having been won over by Drac's claim that humans are harmless now, Vlad shrinks Bela and tells him never to bother his family again. Bela then flees.

With Dennis having vampire abilities, Mavis and Johnny continue to raise him in Transylvania, and they resume the party with his friends.

Voice cast

Production

Director Genndy Tartakovsky commented about the possibility of the sequel in October 2012, "Everyone is talking about it, but we haven't started writing it. There are a lot of fun ideas we could totally play with. It's a ripe world." The next month it was announced that a sequel had been greenlit, and was scheduled for release on September 25, 2015. On March 12, 2014, it was announced that Tartakovsky would return to direct the sequel, even though he was originally too busy due to his developing an adaptation of Popeye, which would later get shelved.

It was suggested by director Genndy Tartakovsky that Adam Sandler had more creative control over this film than its predecessor and that at times he was difficult to work with.

Music

In March 2015, it was announced that Mark Mothersbaugh, who scored the first film, had signed on to score the sequel.

American girl group Fifth Harmony recorded a song for the film entitled "I'm in Love with a Monster". It was featured in the film's official trailer and was also played when the film itself was released.

Release

Columbia Pictures released the film in the United States on September 25, 2015.

Home media

Hotel Transylvania 2 was released on DVD and Blu-ray (2D and 3D) on January 12, 2016, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The film was also released in Digital HD on December 22, 2015.

Box office

Hotel Transylvania 2 has grossed $169.7 million in North America and $303.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $473 million, against a budget of $80 million. Deadline.com calculated the net profit of the film to be $159.48 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues for the film.

Predictions for the opening of Hotel Transylvania 2 in North America were continuously revised upwards, starting from $35—$48 million. Hotel Transylvania 2 earned $13.3 million from 3,754 theaters on its opening day in North America, which was the second-biggest Friday opening day in September, behind Insidious Chapter 2 ($20.3 million). During its opening weekend, Hotel Transylvania 2 earned $48.5 million from 3,754 theaters, finishing first at the box office and setting new records such as earning the biggest September opening (breaking its predecessor's $42.5 million record), the biggest opening for Adam Sandler, beating 2005's The Longest Yard ($47.6 million), and the biggest opening for Sony Pictures Animation. Regarding the film's successful opening, Josh Greenstein, Sony's president of marketing said, "We had a great date, and this is a big win for Sony Pictures Animation." The largest demographic of the opening weekend audience was under the age of 25 (60%) and female (59%), followed by male (41%), 25 and over (40%) and kids (38%). According to Rentrak's PostTrak reports, 23% of the audience bought tickets because it was an animated film, while 16% were attracted to the toon's subject matter and plot.

Hotel Transylvania 2 was released in a total of 90 countries. It was released in 42 markets between September 25 and 27, 2015, the same weekend as its North American release, and earned $30.18 million from 6,500 screens that weekend. Its overall rank for the weekend was second, behind Everest. Its opening weekends in the U.K., Ireland and Malta ($9.5 million including previews), Mexico ($7.84 million), South Korea ($4.2 million), Russia and the CIS ($6 million), Germany ($3.9 million), Italy ($3.7 million) and France and Spain ($3.2 million respectively) in October represented its largest takings. In China, it opened with an estimated $12.1 million debuting at second place behind the Chinese local film The Witness which grossed $18.5 million. While the China figures are low in comparison to recent Hollywood movie openings, it actually excelled the first film's local lifetime gross by 19% in just the first six days. In terms of total earnings, its largest market outside of North America is the U.K. ($29.4 million) followed by Mexico ($23.7 million) and Venezuela ($19.9 million).

Critical reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a rating of 55%, based on 100 reviews, with an average rating of 5.2/10. The site's consensus states: "Hotel Transylvania 2 is marginally better than the original, which may or may not be enough of a recommendation to watch 89 minutes of corny, colorfully animated gags from Adam Sandler and company." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 44 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". In CinemaScore polls, audiences gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.

Max Nicholson of IGN awarded it a score of 6.5 out of 10, saying "While Genndy Tartakovsky's animation is top-notch, Hotel Transylvania 2 doesn't live up to the first monster mash." Nick Schager of Variety gave the film a negative review, saying "Its plot comes across as just a rickety skeleton designed to prop up Sandler and company's litany of cornball punchlines and gags, only a few of which cleverly play off of these characters' iconography" Alonso Duralde of The Wrap gave the film a positive review, saying "Whereas the jokes in the Grown Ups series feel reactionary and bullying, the family-friendly Hotel Transylvania gags instead come off as clever and humane, even when they're making fun of helicopter moms and lawsuit-sensitive summer camps." Stephen Whitty of the Newark Star-Ledger gave the film one and a half stars out of four, saying "Great movies like ParaNorman and Frankenweenie showed the laughs you could get out of funny fiends; Hotel Transylvania 2 just digs up a few corny gags." Bruce Demara of the Toronto Star gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying "While the first Hotel Trans had humour for both younger and older audiences, this one will likely fall short in its appeal to adults, although there's plenty for the little monsters to enjoy."

Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film one out of four stars, saying "Hotel Transylvania 2 is an unfortunate throwback to about 20 years ago, when animated movies were more widely accepted as cinematic babysitters." Sandie Angulo Chen of The Washington Post gave the film two out of four stars, saying "Tartakovsky hasn't created the sort of sequel that eclipses the original, but then again the original wasn't exactly Toy Story or How to Train Your Dragon." Jesse Hassenger of The A.V. Club gave the film a C+, saying "It's an episodic, energetically animated gag factory from the pen of Adam Sandler, and while it's the best screenplay to bear his name in years, it also warps some overfamiliar family-movie concerns until they become unavoidable in their ickiness." Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, saying "This time around, greater attention has been paid to story and character development (while scaling back on all the sight gags) and the substantial results give the ample voice cast and returning director Genndy Tartakovsky more to sink their teeth into, with pleasing results." Josh Kupecki of The Austin Chronicle gave the film one out of five stars, saying "Channeling your inner child, you may find solace in Hotel Transylvania 2, but in the end it has no bite, doing continued disservice to the Universal monsters it scabs out, and adding another soiled feather to Sandler’s cap of mediocrity."

Sequel

Michelle Murdocca, the film's producer, said before the film's release that the studio was "talking about number 3 and moving forward and taking the franchise to the next level." On November 2, 2015, it was announced Hotel Transylvania 3 will be released on September 21, 2018. Despite previously leaving the series to direct other projects, Genndy Tartakovsky will return as director for this installment. According to Tartakovsky, he returned after he got an inspiration from a "miserable" family vacation. Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, and Andy Samberg will also reprise their previous roles as Dracula, Mavis and Johnny in the film, which is being written by Austin Powers writer Michael McCullers. The film will take place aboard a cruise ship. On February 6, 2017, the release date was moved up to July 13, 2018.