If you want more original movies, start going to more original movies
Pixar's "Elio" is the latest animated movie *not* based on an existing franchise to flop at the box office.
When I found out that Disney had a new film coming out called Elio, I wondered if it was a biopic about late Formula One driver Elio de Angelis, or maybe a drama about the vaporware electric car company.
Nope. It’s a Pixar animated movie about a little kid who's abducted by aliens.
And if the opening weekend numbers are any indication, audiences might as well have been abducted by aliens.
“Elio,” the story of a young boy who is mistakenly identified as Earth’s ambassador to the universe, tallied just $21 million in ticket sales during its first three days in theaters, a record low for the studio.
The underwhelming performance fits a recent pattern among Pixar’s releases. While franchise films have lured in moviegoers, the studio’s original fare has had far less success in recent years.
Just look at 2023′s “Elemental,” which brought in the previous lowest-opening haul of $29.6 million, compared with 2024′s “Inside Out 2,” the studio’s second-highest opener at $154.2 million in domestic ticket sales, according to data from Comscore.
Part of the problem might be that Disney+ has trained audiences to wait for the company's movies to come out on the streaming service, or maybe assume that any new Disney movie is in fact a direct-to-streaming release. (That what I’d assumed about Strange World, one of the Disney animated movies of all time, and it might have been the main reason for its box office failure instead of teh ghey stuff.)
Also, as Sonny Bunch1 points out, most animated movie characters these days look seriously off-putting:
According to CNBC, though, it appears that animated-movie audiences just don't seem to be interested in original stories anymore, at least not to the point where they're going to pay for theatre tickets. And it’s not just Disney:
But, it’s not just Pixar that has seen its original storylines fall flat. Disney’s other animation arm, Walt Disney Animation, and even rival animation studios within Universal and Paramount, have seen sequels outperform new stories like “Elio” that aren’t tied to previous works. This phenomenon has also held across the board with live-action films, as well.
“A survey of animated film performance post-pandemic shows that the gap between original [intellectual property] and sequel film performances has grown enormously wide, which is a potential problem for studios looking to grow their IP portfolio,” Doug Creutz, analyst at TD Cowen, wrote in a note to investors published Monday.
In the wake of the pandemic, studios have sought to deliver films that audiences are already familiar with, including sequels and stories based on books or comics. That’s contributed to a flood of franchise content from studios with massive media libraries.
Everyone complains about how movie studios aren't making original stories anymore, and that all we have are just an endless parade of sequels and remakes, but the box office numbers speak for themselves.
Again, the rise of streaming services could be a factor. If we're going to pay outrageous prices to see a new movie in a theatre, we want to know we're going to at least be entertained. And if the movie is based on an IP with which we're already familiar, there's a better chance that is what going to happen.
Well, in most cases at least.
As for Elio, it's a Pixar movie, and even lesser Pixar movies tend to be at least worth watching.2
The studio has been in something of a slump in recent years when it comes to movies that aren't sequels, though. (And Lightyear proved that even the sequel/spinoff route isn’t a guaranteed winner.) Elemental was probably the most forgettable, by-the-numbers film Pixar has ever made, whereas I thought Inside Out 2 was probably even better than the original.
None of this means Elio is a bad movie. From all indications those who have seen it really liked it, and the film will probably find an audience when it finally makes it to Disney+. Good word of mouth could even keep it in theaters for a while.
Company shareholders might not be so patient, though, and instead of more original stories it’s ever more likely we’ll get Ratatouille 2 or Brave II or Big Hero 7 or Toy Story 5 or…
Wait, that last one is actually happening. The fourth movie wasn’t bad, but it was completely unnecessary after a near-perfect film trilogy and was made for no reason other than to make a buck. And it worked.
Yes, even Cars 2, which is actually good. Yeah, I said that, and you know who agreed with me? Roger Ebert, so there.