Early projected box-office numbers for Pixar’s “Elemental” are not good. In fact, it looks like a disaster in the making for Disney.
The animated film cost $200 million to make, but projections are hinting at a very soft $37 million opening. Not good. Add in the mediocre reviews it’s been getting and the chances of it having any legs are nil to none.
This news comes just days after Pixar fired 75 of its employees, including key creatives, as the toon company starts to readjust expectations for the long haul.
It was a mistake to screen “Elemental” at Cannes on May 27th, this resulted in very mixed reviews coming out of the Croisette and expectations being lowered for the upcoming film. I left a day before, so I missed out on it, but I’ll hopefully be attending a press screening next week.
Directed by Peter Sohn, the film is based on an original story set in a world where fire, water, earth and air live together. It currently has a 63 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which, by Pixar standards, is very low.
Things have been deteriorating since the pandemic for Pixar. They launched “Onward” in theaters in early March 2020 — the global gross was a very weak $133.4 million as theaters began shutting down.
The next three Pixar films — 2020’s “Soul”, 2021’s “Luca” and 2022’s “Turning Red” — were all sent straight to Disney Plus. In 2022, “Lightyear” was released in theaters to tepid reviews and is said to have lost Disney a ton of money.
A THR report points to the exit of brain trust John Lasseter as the beginning of the end for the company:
Observers point not only to pandemic challenges, but to a generational change in its leaders, particularly after the 2018 exit of longtime chief creative officer John Lasseter, who departed after acknowledging workplace “missteps” that left some employees feeling, as he wrote, “disrespected or uncomfortable.”
Much has been made of the Pixar “brain trust” that provides creative guidance on each movie, and that too has seen change. “Many of the original Pixar brain trust that started the company are gone: Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, Steve Jobs, Brad Bird, story head [the late] Joe Ranft and more,” observes Tom Sito, an alum of Disney and DreamWorks Animation and an animation professor at USC.
One anonymous animation exec added that despite bringing a new “diversity of filmmakers” to the fray, “the richness and depth, which [Lasseter] brought, is just not there anymore.”
Pixar now, somehow, needs to rekindle the magic that we felt with “Toy Story 3,” “The Incredibles,” “Up!” “Ratatouille,” “Finding Nemo,” “”Inside Out,” and especially their seminal masterpiece, “WALL-E.”
The inventive nature in the above classics has gone away. It’s all surface-level stuff now. They are making overstylized films with none of the risk-taking involved. The last several movies have been nothing more than cynical attempts to hit specific emotional buttons.
Netflix and Skydance Animation have also called it quits. The two sides announced Monday that they're ending the animated film deal struck back in 2023, framing it as a mutual decision.