Elio Bombed At The Box Office, But There's A Big Reason I'm Not Worried About Pixar (Yet)

Pixar was once a seemingly untouchable studio. Every movie the Emeryville, CA studio released seemed to become an overnight hit. The best Pixar movies are some of the best movies ever. From toys come to life to robots in love to superheroes to taking cars, no idea seemed to be too “out there” to draw in an audience.

Today, that’s hardly the case. No single movie studio may have been damaged so badly, and for so long, by the global pandemic as Pixar. After seeing several of its films released straight to Disney+, potentially training audiences to watch Pixar movies at home, only Inside Out 2 has been an unqualified success. And from those heights, Pixar has now come crashing down.

Elio Had The Worst Pixar Opening Ever

The big news coming out of the weekend box office is that Pixar had its worst opening weekend of all time with Elio. Despite solid reviews, the movie barely surpassed $20 million at the domestic box office, and its current worldwide tally sits at less than $35 million. It’s certainly a significant drop from Inside Out 2, which became the highest-grossing animated movie ever made last summer.

Elio’s results are seen as a trend for Pixar. There’s a feeling that the studio that once could do no wrong can no longer launch successful franchises, as none of the original movies that Pixar has made in the last several years have made a significant impact. Can Pixar simply not make original movies anymore?

Pixar’s Original Movies Are Suffering The Same Fate As The Rest Of Hollywood

While a great deal has been made of Pixar’s failings of late, a lot of it is blown out of proportion. Of the two original stories released before Elio, but after theaters were open again, one movie struggled, but the other was a solid success. While Elemental had a rough opening weekend, the second worst in Pixar history at the time, between having solid legs domestically and being a solid win overseas, it was actually reasonably successful. It's still possible Elio could end up doing much better than its opening has suggested, as Elemental did.

Lightyear, which barely made back its $200 million budget, has to be seen as a disappointment, but considering that movie at least had a popular character to trade on, there’s an argument it was more of a “franchise” movie than an original one, even if it wasn’t a Toy Story movie.

The truth is that while Pixar absolutely is having a hard time launching non-franchise material, as is basically every other studio. There’s a reason everybody made a big deal of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners becoming a box office champ despite its lack of franchise connection. Few original movies, of any kind, have done that well in a very long time.

Once upon a time, simply being a Pixar movie may have been enough to draw an audience to the theater, but that's clearly not the case anymore. Now, audiences are in the same place with Pixar as they are with most other studios. They'll put their trust in franchises more easily than original content, because those franchises are known and trusted.

Pixar Still Needs To Find A Winner

That doesn’t mean there isn’t some cause for concern. A broadly successful, crowd-pleasing original story is absolutely something Pixar needs to produce, and sooner rather than later, if at all possible. The studio still needs the occasional original hit, if for no other reason than to create new franchises for the future. Many people thought the Toy Story movies should have ended with the third, and while Toy Story 4 was still wildly successful, and Toy Story 5 likely will be, there is absolutely a point at which franchises go on too long, and must be replaced by something new.

Of course, there’s no magic formula for creating brand-new hit movies. If anybody could do it, it would happen all the time. Pixar's track record, on the whole, is better than most. Whether something like Hoppers or the recently announced Gatto is the story we’ve been waiting for, only time will tell. Until then, we’ll always have Coco 2.