Pixar film Elemental opens as studio's second-lowest box-office debut

LOS ANGELES – Pixar’s animated movie Elemental took in roughly US$30 million (S$40.2 million) at United States and Canadian box offices over the weekend, the second-lowest debut in the history of the acclaimed studio behind the Toy Story franchise, Finding Nemo (2003) and other classics.

Elemental, a story about overcoming outward differences, added US$15 million overseas for a global total of US$45 million from last Friday to Sunday, said distributor Walt Disney Co. The film opened in just three major international markets and will expand to other countries in the coming weeks.

The Flash, the latest DC superhero movie from Warner Bros, also underwhelmed at the box office. It topped the domestic charts with an estimated US$55.1 million, according to researcher ComScore, at the low end of pre-weekend forecasts.

Analysts had predicted that Elemental would open with at least US$31 million at domestic theatres. The US$30 million estimate, which will be finalised on Monday, would rank just ahead of the US$29.1 million for 1995‘s Toy Story, Pixar’s first movie. Toy Story became a global blockbuster that spawned multiple hit sequels.

The studio is looking to rebound from the box-office disappointment of its 2022 release Lightyear, the origin story of Toy Story hero Buzz Lightyear. The movie brought in an earthbound US$226.7 million in global ticket sales, a fraction of the US$1 billion take for 2019‘s Toy Story 4.

The director and producer of Lightyear were laid off in May 2023, Reuters first reported, as Disney shed 7,000 jobs across the company in a cost-cutting effort.

Elemental is set in Element City, where Fire, Water, Earth and Air characters live together. An unexpected friendship between Fire and Water borrows from Korean-American director Peter Sohn’s relationship with his Italian-American wife, which he initially hid from his parents.

Mr Tony Chambers, head of theatrical distribution at Disney, said he was disappointed by the domestic ticket sales for Elemental, which received positive feedback from movie critics and audiences and was heavily marketed. Audiences gave the film an “A” rating in polling by CinemaScore.

He noted that both live-action and animated films based on original stories and characters have struggled at theatres since the Covid-19 pandemic. Franchises based on well-known intellectual property (IP), such as current hit Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, are drawing mass audiences.

“Original IP has a harder time cutting through in the market,” Mr Chambers said. “At this point in time, it’s a very busy marketplace.”

During the pandemic, former Disney chief executive Bob Chapek decided to release three Pixar movies – Soul (2020), Luca (2021) and Turning Red (2022) – exclusively on the Disney+ streaming service.

That taught audiences to expect that Pixar movies would be available to watch at home, said Mr Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst at Exhibitor Relations Co.

At theatres, “they’re going to go back to the drawing board, and in this case what the drawing board means is sequels,” he added, pointing to 2024’s Inside Out 2 and the planned Toy Story 5. “Disney knows how to make sequels,” he said. REUTERS