Pixar’s ‘Elemental’ is falling flat, adding to brand concerns

Pixar is damaged as a big screen brand.

That was one of the rather dismal takeaways from the weekend box office, which found “Elemental,” a $200 million+ Pixar original, with a disastrous $29.5 million in domestic ticket sales. ‘The Flash’, a superhero show from Warner Bros. which cost about $200 million also struggled, taking in a lethargic $55.1 million, according to Comscore, which compiles ticket data.

“Hard to reconcile this,” says David A. Gross, a film consultant who has a newsletter on cash register numbers.

Questions about Pixar’s health to have swirled in Hollywood and among investors since last June, when the Disney-owned studio released “Lightyear” with disastrous results. How could Pixar, the gold standard of animation studios for nearly three decades, have got a movie so wrong – especially one about Buzz Lightyear, a base character from “Toy Story”?

Perhaps pandemic-stricken families weren’t quite ready to return to theaters just yet. Or maybe, as some box-office analysts speculated, Disney had weakened the Pixar brand by using its movies to build the Disney+ streaming service. Beginning in late 2020, Disney debuted three Pixar movies in a row (“Soul,” “Turning Red,” and “Luca”) online, bypassing theaters altogether.

By streaming standards, those three movies were fleeting hits. But Pixar’s most recent box-office success came in 2019, when “Toy Story 4” grossed $1.1 billion worldwide.

Attendance for “Elemental” over the weekend reinforced the brand problem hypothesis: It was Pixar’s worst-ever opening weekend result in the United States and Canada. The previous low was “Onward,” which hit $39 million ($46 million when adjusted for inflation) in domestic ticket sales in March 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to sweep the world.

“Elemental,” a cross-cultural romantic comedy between girls and boys, grossed another $15 million in a limited release overseas, Disney said.

To ensure Pixar films are more than just Disney+ food, the company premiered “Elemental” at the Cannes Film Festival and premiered in Los Angeles at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. “We’ve trained the public that these movies will be available to you on Disney+,” Pete Docter, Pixar’s chief creative officer, said in a statement Friday. interview with Variety, a trade news outlet. “We’re trying to get people to realize you’re missing out on a lot by not seeing it on the big screen.”

Movies based on original stories are becoming increasingly difficult to sell, especially at a time when going to the cinema has become more expensive and the wider economy is unsettled. People want to know it’s worth spending the money. The animated films that have been successful are based on established characters and franchises.

“If you don’t swing for original stories, you can’t create new franchises, and we were swinging really hard,” said Tony Chambers, Disney’s executive vice president of theatrical distribution. Referring to intellectual property, he added, “Original IP has to work a lot harder to break through these days.”

Families turned out in droves for “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” (Universal) in April and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” (Sony) earlier this month. Family movie budgets may be running out right now, and moviegoers know they’ll be able to catch “Elemental” at home soon.

Some people in Hollywood and beyond Wall Street also worry that Pixar’s once brilliant creative spark is beginning to flicker. The studio has experienced a brain drain; it cut 75 jobs last month as part of Disney-wide layoffs and cost cutting. (The “Lightyear” director Angus McLane, a 26-year-old Pixar veteran, was among those who received a pink slip.) Pixar has also been pushed to expand into television production to keep Disney+ shelves stocked. “The higher the volume, the lower the quality,” says Terry Press, a former executive of Disney, DreamWorks, and CBS Films.

Reviews for “Elemental” were mostly positive, albeit to a lesser extent than usual for a Pixar release. Ticket buyers gave it an A rating in CinemaScore exit polls. The “audience score” on Rotten Tomatoes stood at a sky-high 91 percent positive on Sunday morning.

In a statement, Disney said the positive reviews “set us up for a strong theatrical run during the school holiday season.” The Next Big Family Animated Movie Is “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem(Paramount), which doesn’t hit theaters until August 2.

“The Flash” (Warner Bros.) received weaker reviews and a colder audience response — ticket buyers gave it a B in CinemaScore exit polls — but filled enough seats to become the No. 1 movie in the United States and Canada. The film finds the titular superhero using his powers to travel back in time and accidentally causing mayhem. Batman and Supergirl also feature prominently.

In part, “The Flash” suffered from timing: It was delayed by the pandemic and finally came at a time when late night shows — crucial movie marketing platforms — are being shut down due to a show writers’ strike. Warner Bros. and its DC Studios division have also cited superhero fatigue as an explanation for the recent underperformance of a series of their comics-based films, including ‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ and ‘Black Adam’.

Ezra Miller, who played the Flash, has been divisive following off-screen legal troubles and erratic behavior in 2021 and 2022. (The actor, who is non-binary, apologized last year and said they were seeking mental health treatment. They largely did no publicity for “The Flash”.)

“The world of superheroes is fantasy, escapist fun,” said Mr. Gross. “Everyone has to play. This didn’t help.”