5 Reasons Why Pixar's Elio Flopped At The Box Office

Pixar has had a bit of a bumpy ride at the box office over the last handful of years. Dating back to the original "Toy Story" in 1995, Pixar was one of Hollywood's most reliable hit-makers, particularly when it came to original movies. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic changed all of that in 2020, and Disney's golden animation studio has fallen on relatively tough times. Sadly, those tough times have continued with the release of "Elio."

Hailing from directors Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, and Adrian Molina, "Elio" opened to just $21 million domestically this past weekend. That makes it, by a significant margin, the lowest opening weekend in Pixar's history. "Toy Story" opened to $29.1 million, but that was in '95 and, adjusted for inflation, would be a heck of a lot more. After that, it's 2023's "Elemental," which opened to $29.6 million before legging out to $495 million worldwide. That, however, was an extraordinary case that can't be counted on to repeat itself.

Whether or not "Elio" can pull an "Elemental" remains to be seen, but even if it does have similarly miraculous legs, it would still probably have a very tough time clearing $400 million worldwide in light of its very soft $14 million international debut. In short, at least out of the gate, it's hard to call this anything but a massive misfire for Disney and Pixar.

So, what went wrong here? How did this well-reviewed Pixar original come to suffer such a grim commercial fate? We're going to take a closer look at the biggest reasons why "Elio" flopped at the box office on its opening weekend. Let's dig in.

"Elio" centers on a space-obsessed alien fanatic human child who gets beamed up by an interplanetary organization with representatives from galaxies far and wide. Elio is mistakenly identified as Earth's leader and must form new bonds with these aliens and navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions.

It feels like the kind of original concept that Pixar would have been able to effectively sell in the days of old, like the company did with "WALL-E" or "Up." Unfortunately, that era seems to be over. In 2024, three of the four biggest movies of the year were all animated sequels, including "Despicable Me 4" ($969 million), "Moana 2" ($1 billion), and "Inside Out 2" ($1.69 billion). Animation is hugely attractive. Pixar's good name still means something, but as painful as it is to admit, it means an awful lot more if audiences are presented with a sequel to an already established property. That's not to say that original ideas can't catch on, but it's just much harder for that to happen after the pandemic reconfigured viewers' relationship to Pixar.

As unfortunate as it is to frame it this way, being original was a creative asset to "Elio." But commercially speaking, it was probably the movie's greatest weakness.

I'm no marketing expert and won't pretend to be for the purposes of this article. That said, when the movie in question hails from a studio as big as Disney, it's tough not to notice when they drop the ball on something like "Elio." This is a big, $150 million movie from Pixar. Most of the time, that means a massive campaign that is impossible to miss. While I'm sure Disney did spend money to get this movie out into the world, they also didn't market it effectively or, arguably, nearly enough.

"It seems clear that 'Elio' was ultimately a victim of a parent company that decided to cut its losses and save money on an expensive marketing campaign," /Film's Jeremy Mathai recently wrote in response to how Disney handled "Elio" and its release. For whatever reason, Disney may have been convinced that this movie wasn't worth investing in an overly expensive, blanket, global marketing campaign like the one for "Moana 2" or "Inside Out 2." Is spending that advertising money riskier when you're trying to sell an original? Sure. But it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at some point if Disney isn't willing to fully take that leap of faith — particularly in light of the response to the movie, which we'll dive into more here in a moment.

In part due to Disney's lackluster marketing campaign in the lead up to the release, the studio was also unable to capitalize on frankly great word of mouth that is spreading for "Elio." As of this writing, the film holds a very good 84% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes but a stellar 91% audience rating. It also boasts an A CinemaScore, which is one of the best indicators we have when it comes to how a movie will hold after opening weekend. Put simply, critics really liked it and the audiences who are watching it are eating it up.

The problem? Without a bigger turn out on opening weekend, it's going to be very tough for this movie to reach a big enough saturation point with audiences to make it an outright hit. In his review, /Film's Jeremy Mathai called "Elio" Pixar's best original since "Coco," a movie that made nearly $815 million worldwide. Granted, that was at a very different time for the industry, but it's so much easier to capitalize on a $50 million opening than it is a $20 million opening. Even if word of mouth is stellar, that only means so much when the opening weekend number is so low relative to a movie of this size.

It is very appropriate, generally speaking, for a Pixar movie to be released in the midst of summer. "Inside Out 2" literally became the biggest animated movie ever (for a brief period) after hitting theaters last summer. So it's not inherently a problem that Disney decided to release "Elio" right in the heart of the summer movie season. The problem ended up being the stiffer-than-expected competition this movie had to face.

Universal's live-action "How to Train Your Dragon" held very well after its massive opening weekend, pulling in another $37 million and topping the charts. That is a family movie trying to reach the same audience, as is Disney's own "Lilo & Stitch," which made $9.7 million on its fifth weekend and is rapidly closing in on the $1 billion mark globally. Adult audiences also had "28 Years Later" to pull their attention. Granted, that's less direct competition, but it's still pulling attention nonetheless. It all added up to make a difficult situation even more difficult. On a different weekend, who knows? Maybe this movie would have performed slightly better in the fall or over Thanksgiving. On a crowded late June weekend, though, it got buried.

Perhaps more than any other factor at play here, Disney only has itself to blame. When the pandemic hit in 2020, "Onward" was in the earliest stages of its theatrical run. Disney decided to rush the movie to Disney+ under unprecedented circumstances. Unfortunately, this became a trend, with the likes of "Soul," "Luca," and "Turning Red" all going to Disney+ at no additional cost to subscribers over the next two years. At a time when streaming was already working to keep audiences home, people were taught that Pixar movies — particularly the studio's original movies — were essentially "free" on Disney+.

Disney CEO Bob Iger even admitted as such, saying in 2023, "I think that may have created an expectation in the audience that they're going to eventually be on streaming and probably quickly, and there wasn't an urgency." It is so much harder to put the genie back in the bottle than to let it out. Re-training audiences to come back to the theaters for these movies is going to require an incredible amount of effort, and it's probably going to cost a lot of money that may not be returned right away.

Pixar's "Elio" suffered as a result of those panic-driven, short-sighted decisions, but its failure cannot be a signal to Disney that Pixar originals aren't worth doing. I argued previously that "Inside Out 2" was proof positive that Pixar needed to stay the course with originals. In light of this movie's wildly disappointing opening weekend, that is perhaps more true than ever. It's just that Disney needs to fully get behind the movie next time around.

"Elio" is in theaters now.