Even before the 2025 movie schedule saw Pixar muddle through Elio’s not-so-stellar opening weekend, the storied Disney brand has found itself with a bit of a problem. Mainly, the company that innovated with films like Toy Story and The Incredibles seems to be able to keep those brands afloat, but can’t seem to get any original pictures to have that same success. But leave it to chief creative officer and long time Pixar stalwart Pete Docter to address the question of why that’s so, in a way that’s truly on brand.
On hand for the Most Innovative Companies Summit held by the publication FastCompany, Docter acknowledged ; shortly before Elio’s record low opening that the seas have been choppy. The director who helped make original concepts like Up and Inside Out into blockbuster hits provided his take on what’s happened, as you’ll read in part of Pete Docter’s remarks:
It’s a rough time, and all we can do is try to make movies that I think are led by us. We have to believe in them. It takes as much work and effort to make something that doesn’t make money as it does for something that does. And you can’t really plan on this stuff. Sometimes you just hit the right little combinations of things.
It may seem like a pretty simple answer, which contains the Pixar mission statement that’s driven the company since day one. But when comparing the animated market from Toy Story's 1995 debut to its current state, where the classic is seen as a Disney+ subscription mainstay, and the conditions are vastly different.
Most importantly, the competition from both domestic rivals DreamWorks Animation, as well as more plentiful access to animated features and series from across the globe, have diversified the pool. An odd sort of reminder of that fact has been occupying space at the multiplex, as How to Train Your Dragon’s live-action remake entered its second weekend at #1, with Elio’s year-long delay seeing it clock in with a 3rd place finish.
So where does Pixar go from here? Is it simply a matter of time before Toy Story 5 is broken up into a new trilogy in the name of solvency? Well, that’s not exactly what Pete Docter would do. If anything, the Soul co-director’s approach is pretty much the same thing the company would do on any other day:
We have to find out what people want before they know it. Because if we just gave them more of what they know, we’d be making Toy Story 27.
Again, we see a paradoxical statement that seems so simple, but requires a lot of thought. Ultimately, box office success or not, that’s what’s kept Pixar movies in the spotlight. While some may not have taken to Lightyear’s bold approach to re-spinning its Toy Story hero, others (myself included) had a ball with it.
That’s because while the marketing might get muddled or the audience might be semi-conditioned to wait for Disney+ to see these future streaming hits, Pixar movies are still fun. They are, as Pete Docter put it, led by the creatives that make them. It’s just a question of trying to map up the talents of the bullpen with the wants and tastes of the audience at large.
So if you’ve been meaning to give this animated romp a shot, or even if you’re just merely upset that another original concept seems to have faltered, you have a clear assignment awaiting you. Go see Elio in theaters and throw your support to a film that could, if it plays its cards right, become the next Elemental-style success story.
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