Disney CEO Seemingly Confirms Chris Evans’ Future After His $225M Box-Office Failure
American actor Chris Evans rose to fame with his role as Marvel Comics’ Human Torch in two of the Fantastic Four movies. Coincidentally, the character that he is most famous for is Marvel’s Captain America. He starred as Captain America for almost 10 years with his first appearance being in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) and the last in Avengers: Endgame (2019). So, Marvel has a huge hand in making him one of the highest-paid actors in the world.
In 2022, Evans became a part of another huge franchise, Disney-Pixar’s Toy Story. He voiced the titular character in the 2022 animated sci-fi action movie, Lightyear. In this movie, the popular Toy Story character, Buzz Lightyear, is a human instead of a toy. The movie was criticized for its screenplay and didn’t do well at the box office.
Read More: Disney Has Lost Over $660 Million With Three Box Office Disasters Including Chris Evans’ Movie
Chris Evans’ Lightyear Failed to Be Profitable
Chris Evans is undoubtedly one of Hollywood’s best actors but his character in Lightyear certainly didn’t benefit from his immaculate acting skills. In fact, it bombed at the box office despite the star-studded cast that included Keke Palmer and Taika Watiti among others.
The movie grossed $226 million worldwide against a production budget of $200 million despite having generated mostly positive reviews upon release. While $226 million is a great deal of money for a movie to have earned at the box office, it certainly doesn’t match up with Disney’s previous records.
We are cleared for launch! 🚀 Disney and Pixar’s #Lightyear is now on Blu-ray! Add it to your Pixar collection today. https://t.co/OAncx3EmCw pic.twitter.com/RoXxtecwhR
— Pixar’s Lightyear (@PixarsLightyear) September 13, 2022
Lightyear isn’t the only Pixar movie that has been a failure at the box office lately. Elemental, released in 2023, had a fate similar to Lightyear as it earned modest profits. In a recent interview, Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted the studio’s struggles to make the most out of its recent releases.
The CEO’s comments along with the movie’s underperformance make Evans’ return as Buzz Lightyear in the Disney world highly unlikely if the studio learns from its mistakes and wants to do better in the future.
Chris Evans’ Lightyear Was Set Up for Failure
The Toy Story spin-off was met with criticism since the beginning. John Lasseter, director of the original Toy Story, was reportedly “extremely critical” of both Lightyear and Strange World, another one of Disney’s box-office bombs. Moreso because Buzz Lightyear is a character that Lasseter “created and nurtured” himself for 25 years.
Disney CEO Bob Iger’s recent comments about the studio’s “creative misses” in favor of producing large amounts of content pointed specifically to Lightyear as it was the first theatrical release after the COVID-19 pandemic. He said:
“It’s reflective not as a problem from a personnel perspective, but I think in our in our zeal to basically grow our content significantly to serve mostly our streaming offerings, we ended up taxing our people way beyond — in terms of their time and their focus — way beyond where they had been.”
There are many reasons why Lightyear might have suffered. One of these could be replacing former Buzz voice actor, Tim Allen with Chris Evans. The movie’s release date coinciding with some of the most anticipated movies of 2022 such as Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World Dominion also contributed to its poor performance.
Source: ScreenRant
