Reading the article in tigana123's original post, I found the following were the most interesting facts:
Playmobil: The Movie was made on a $75 million budget, but took only $656,630 at US box offices in its first weekend. This is despite many theatres offering half price admission ($5 a pop). (Even without half price tickets, takings would probably not have cleared $1 million).
Globally, box office receipts stand at just $12.5 million, showing that the film has not been particularly well received by audiences even in parts of the world where Playmobil is a better established brand than seems to be the case in the US.
Comparing this film with others released in a similar number of theatres (2,300+) makes this the biggest flop ever in the US. A less ambitious release may have avoided this embarrassing statistic, but it's still a flop!
The late release in the US compared with other parts of the world was due to the bankruptcy of the original US Distributers, not a marketing policy.
Many other toy-based or animated movies have flopped in recent times, including Lego ones! Even Disney's Frozen 2, which I saw in an empty (audience of 14) cinema 5 days ago seems to struggle to attract people (admittedly when we went, it had been on UK release for 13 days already).