General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Turbo (2013 film)

Turbo is a 2013 American 3D computer-animated comedy from DreamWorks Animation, distributed by 20th Century Fox, about a garden snail who gains super-speed after a freak accident and enters the Indianapolis 500. Directed by David Soren from a screenplay by Soren, Darren Lemke, and Robert Siegel, it opened on July 17, 2013 and earned $286,896,578 worldwide against a $135,000,000 production budget.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	July 17, 2013 (wide and IMAX) by 20th Century Fox; video release November 12, 2013 by Fox Home Entertainment²
Director / writers	David Soren; screenplay by Soren, Darren Lemke, and Robert Siegel; produced by Lisa Stewart¹
Voice cast	Ryan Reynolds (Turbo), Paul Giamatti (Chet), Samuel L. Jackson (Whiplash), Michael Peña, Luis Guzmán, Bill Hader, Snoop Dogg, Maya Rudolph, Ben Schwartz, Richard Jenkins, Ken Jeong, Michelle Rodriguez¹^•³
Box office	$83,028,130 domestic, $203,868,448 international, $286,896,578 worldwide; production budget $135,000,000²
Opening	$21,312,625 weekend gross in 3,806 theaters; an "A" CinemaScore after a $5.6 million Wednesday debut²^•⁴
Critical reception	Metascore 58 ("Mixed or Average") from 30 critic reviews; user score 6.4³
Rating / runtime	PG for some mild action and thematic elements; 96 minutes²

Spoilers

Premise

Turbo, an ordinary garden snail voiced by Ryan Reynolds, dreams of becoming the fastest snail in the world. A freak accident gives him the power of super-speed, and with the help of a streetwise crew of tricked-out snails and a struggling taco-stand owner, he attempts to race in the Indianapolis 500.¹^•⁵ The film's antagonist on the track is the French-Canadian five-time Indy champion Guy Gagné, voiced by Bill Hader.³^•⁶

Origin and production

The idea came out of a one-off "pitch fest" at DreamWorks Animation in which any studio employee could submit a one-page synopsis. David Soren, then head of story on Shark Tale, wrote his entry the night before the deadline, inspired by two events at home: his young son zooming toy cars around the living room and the snails slowly destroying a tomato plant in his yard. His pitch was one of ten to advance, and the only one bought, initially as a log line, "Fast and Furious with snails." Soren has said he shaped the story on the template of classic underdog films such as Rocky, The Karate Kid, and Breaking Away, reasoning that a snail, smushed by children, despised by gardeners, and plucked by crows, is the natural underdog.⁷

The production was technically demanding. The film required 75 million render hours to create its finished images, including 32 Indy 500 race cars and 32 million crowd character instances.⁸ Composer Henry Jackman wrote the score.⁹

Marketing and racing ties

DreamWorks built the release around real racing brands. Marketing commitments gave the film enough impressions to justify featuring Sunoco fueling stations, Firestone tires, and a Verizon-branded car in the film itself, with Sunoco putting Turbo signage in its stations and a Turbo logo at the end of its television commercials.¹⁰ Two weeks after release the film had grossed more than $60 million domestically and $40 million internationally and had scored an A-plus in child exit polls on CinemaScore.¹¹

Box office and financial outcome

The film opened in 3,806 theaters and took $21,312,625 on its first weekend, 25.7 percent of its eventual domestic total, with a legs ratio of 3.90. It finished with $83,028,130 domestically and $203,868,448 internationally, a worldwide total of $286,896,578, about 2.1 times its $135,000,000 production budget. Estimated domestic disc sales added $69,458,133, of which $44,160,319 came from DVD and $25,297,814 from Blu-ray.²

The theatrical result fell short for the studio. DreamWorks Animation's 2014 annual report states that Fox did not report any revenue to DreamWorks for Turbo during 2013 because Fox had not yet recouped its marketing and distribution costs, largely due to the film's low box office results, and that How to Train Your Dragon 2 performed stronger in worldwide theatrical and home entertainment markets.¹² In May 2014, DreamWorks Animation learned that the SEC's Division of Enforcement was conducting an investigation into the writedown of film inventory relating to Turbo and related matters.¹³ Time later grouped Turbo with Mr. Peabody & Sherman among the studio's box-office flops before the stronger 2015 opening of Home.¹⁴

Critical reception

The film received mixed-to-positive reviews, with a Metascore of 58 based on 30 critic reviews and a user score of 6.4.³ Reviewers frequently compared it to Pixar's Cars; Time Out called the comparison easy but no bad thing.¹⁵ The Dissolve's Genevieve Koski wrote that nothing in the underdog-sports narrative was revolutionary, but that the film's emotional beats were potent thanks to its focus on the human-snail relationships, and she later named it an underrated film of 2013.¹⁶^•¹⁷ RogerEbert.com judged the dialogue smarter than it needed to be for a family audience, while noting that some of the voice casting and humor left the film open to charges of insensitivity.¹⁸ Common Sense Media praised the positive messages about believing in yourself and never giving up, flagged weight-related humor and stereotyped characters, and recommended the film for ages 6 and up.¹⁹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026