After decades of dominating the animation world, Disney and its subsidiary studio Pixar have been telling a different story pver the past year with box office busts “Lightyear” and “Strange World.” Unfortunately for Disney CEO Bob Iger, who bought Pixar in his first run as chief executive and needs it to perform well in his second, their latest release “Elemental” looks like it will continue this slump when it arrives at theaters this weekend.
Since “Elemental” landed on tracking three weeks ago, opening projections haven’t exceeded $40 million, and with preview screenings beginning Thursday afternoon, tracking still remains low at $35 million-$40 million. Not only is that beneath the $50.5 million opening of “Lightyear,” which carried the same reported production budget as “Elemental” at around $200 million, it could also fall below the $39 million openings of “The Good Dinosaur” and “Onward” to become Pixar’s lowest opening weekend after adjusting for inflation.
Whatever the reasons are for Disney’s failure to hook in audiences for this film, a lack of trying isn’t one of them. Disney has put in a full marketing campaign for this movie to drum up interest among families and sell “Elemental” as an event film that must be seen in theaters. It’s quite the switch from the strategy given to Pixar’s “Turning Red,” which former CEO Bob Chapek moved from a theatrical release to a Disney+ exclusive launch in March 2022.
Presenting “Elemental” to the public as a theatrical event was also the reason why Disney premiered the film on the closing day of the Cannes Film Festival, though such a move was probably targeted more at general audiences than the core family demo that doesn’t pay attention to what happens on the French Riviera. Unfortunately, the handful of critics who saw the film at Cannes gave it tepid reviews, preventing “Elemental” from using the premiere to start building audience buzz.
The one saving grace for “Elemental” is that critics’ reviews from press screenings over the past week have been more positive, and the film’s Rotten Tomatoes score has risen to 78% with 60 reviews logged at time of writing, slightly better than the 74% for “Lightyear” and 72% for “Strange World.” That might improve walk-up ticket sales for “Elemental,” but the film will still have to face third-weekend competition from the popular “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” whose box office gross is on its way to passing the $500 million global mark.
With significant live-action competition splintering the general audience crowd, the best case scenario for “Elemental” is that it is able to build enough interest among families to get a significant number of parents to buy tickets instead of waiting for the film’s Disney+ release, allowing it to stem the tide against “Spider-Verse” and DreamWorks’ upcoming “Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken,” which is facing even worse tracking with a projected opening weekend of below $10 million.
But barring significant overperformance from international markets, “Elemental” is unlikely to do better than “Lightyear,” and with “Ruby Gillman” also tracking to be a flop, theaters are still searching for the next original animated theatrical hit. Given its holiday streaming success, Disney’s “Encanto” might have been that hit had the COVID-19 omicron variant not hobbled moviegoing interest among families, but the fact remains that sequels like “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” and “Across the Spider-Verse” have been the only animated titles to turn a profit since theaters reopened.
