‘Elemental’ Draws In Huge Numbers on Disney Plus, Highlighting Pixar’s Theatrical Troubles
Pixar’s latest, Elemental, premiered on Disney Plus on September 13 after a three-month theatrical run where it earned $484M worldwide, which includes $330M from overseas markets. The film had a lot of trouble in its first few weeks out in the wild, competing in the animated field with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and found itself trying to justify to audiences out there why they should go out and watch it — initially, Pixar failed at that, much like most of June’s releases.
The movie eventually picked up some steam a few weeks into the summer, once it started to roll out in international markets, and once it turned out to be the movie to take the kids to — word of mouth quickly spread from there. However, there are several reasons why it struggled initially to captivate audiences. Pixar loves its prime June spot, but June 2023 turned out to be a whole massacre for every studio in town aside from Sony Pictures Animation (Across the Spider-Verse earned an impressive $690M). That was also due to a combination of factors, including the hype around the movie and the fact that they were there first (franchise fatigue everywhere else also helped).
Another factor playing against Pixar’s latest is the fact that Disney decided to bet on it and have it as the closing film at the Cannes Film Festival, one of the toughest crowds in the world. It quickly backfired, with mixed reviews coming out of it that it never recovered from (similar to another Disney movie, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny). The Rotten Tomatoes critic score eventually landed on a respectable 74%, though only 66% of 58 top critics were positive about the film. Audiences were much more kind to it, with 93% giving their stamp of approval. Of course, once they got to watch it. This isn’t really a surprise, though — after finally watching it, the movie is pretty good. It’s no Inside Out, which is maybe what the studio was hoping for (and therefore not enough to sway the vast majority of critics), but it’s solid enough to earn a positive reaction from most of the audience.
But of course, there is another reason why the movie just didn’t perform to the studios’ expectations. After the pandemic started, then-Disney CEO decided to shift the company’s focus to streaming, and after delaying the June 2020 Pixar film to Christmas, Soul was eventually dumped on Disney Plus. It must have performed well enough that it motivated the company to announce June 2021’s Luca would be following the same model. That was already a bit questionable, given the success of A Quiet Place Part II and Fast 9 that summer, but we can even give it a pass; however, some feathers were ruffled inside Pixar. Those sentiments were only exacerbated when next March’s Turning Red was also announced to be moving away from theaters.
That pattern trained audiences to expect Pixar films to come out on Disney Plus, and not go to the theaters. It’s less expensive for kids, as you’re not paying $80-$100 for an afternoon out, and you can just sit them at home and have them quiet for 90 minutes. The first victim was June 2022’s Lightyear, which only grossed $226M worldwide — one of Pixar’s biggest disasters, ever. There are plenty of explanations for why that happened, but it ultimately comes down to this: word of mouth wasn’t there. But that wasn’t the case for Elemental, though.
Elemental built on all the word of mouth it had accumulated to draw in many viewers over its first five days on Disney Plus. The company announced on Monday that it had accumulated 26.4M views over its first five days on the platform, where one view equals the streamed runtime divided by the total runtime of the movie. It left The Little Mermaid‘s 16M views down at the bottom of the sea, and became the biggest movie premiere of the year, and cracked the Top 10 movie premieres of all time for Disney Plus. (The company hasn’t disclosed the other 9 titles yet, though we assume Hocus Pocus 2 and Turning Red are in there.)
That begs the question, though — has Disney trained its audience to wait for Pixar films to come out on Disney Plus, or was this just a fluke, where it benefitted from word of mouth circulating later than usual? The truth lies somewhere in the middle, but it’s something Bob Iger and Pete Docter will have to examine as they get ready to promote Elio, which is out next March. After all, there was a time when Pixar originals like Coco and Inside Out cleared $800M at the worldwide box office.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
