Is ‘Elemental’ a Flop? Pixar Boss Reveals Disney Doesn’t Care and Has a System in Place to Milk Even Box Office Disasters
Elemental, a computer-animated romantic comedy-drama film directed by Peter Sohn from Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios, premiered as the closing picture at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. The film was dubbed a “sleeper hit” and earned negative reviews from critics.
Elemental debuted at the box office with the worst opening weekend in Pixar’s 28-year history, but revenues have since improved. The animated movie features the voices of actors Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covey, and Catherine O’Hara. But the question of whether the film should be called a flop or not remains unanswered. Let us find out.
Pixar president expressed disappointment with Elemental’s opening weekend box office
Pixar President Jim Morris recently spoke to Variety where he was asked about their reaction to the opening weekend collection of the animated movie, to which he said that it was certainly disappointing if considering the revenue, as they felt pretty good about the movie and had higher hopes for its opening weekend.
On asking about how people are responding to the story of the movie, Morris explained that the movie is about a love story of people from a different world and it is something unique that they wanted to explore via animation. He added, “It has an immigration story which is fundamentally American, but speaks to people in other cultures as well.”
The President expressed that they have a lot of different revenue streams but at the box office they are looking at now, the sales should do better than break even, and then they have revenue coming in from the streaming platforms, theme parks, and consumer products. He added that it’s going to be profitable for Disney.
Jim Morris explained Pixar and Disney Animation like having a colony of artists
During the conversation, the president was asked if there was a way to make such animated movies at a lower budget, on which he said that the way such movies are made for less money and almost all of their competitors are doing that is to do work offshore.
He noted, “It’s only us and Disney Animation that makes animation films in the U.S. anymore with all of the artists under one roof. We feel like having a colony of artists has differentiated our films. We hope to find a path to make that work. Elemental was particularly expensive because all the characters have visual effects. We had been getting the film costs down.”
Morris also mentioned, “The other thing I’ll say about our film budgets is that our whole company exists only to make these films. So when we say a budget, that is everything it takes to run the whole company.”
Is Elemental a flop? Disney clarifies in a statement
The unfortunate run at the box office for Elemental raised questions among the fans if the movie Elemental was a flop, but Disney Studios appeared to save the day and released a statement clarifying that the movie was not a flop.
The statement explained that however the movie did not attract the usual masses for a movie from Pixar, the movie did not evaporate at the box office because the audience kept showing up. Tony Chambers, Disney’s EVP of Theatrical Distribution said, “After a disappointing opening weekend, we’re really pleased that audiences have discovered what a great movie it is. We knew we had a clear run throughout the domestic summer playing period. And its global gross to date has been propelled by top performing international markets including South Korea, Mexico, France, and the UK.”
When Jim Morris was asked about the biggest challenge they are facing as of now, he said that going to movies with family is expensive when, during COVID, the audience was trained to watch movies on Disney+. He added,
“I won’t say there was a lot of choice. For periods of time, it was the only thing we could do. We have a little work to unring the bell and motivate families to go to the theater and not wait a few months to see it on Disney+.”
He lastly added that the Pixar movies have dealt with more sophisticated themes and they have tried to make them accessible to everyone. It’s something that they constantly work on and they do not want to stop doing that, but at the end of the day, they would like the people to watch the movies in theatres.
Source: Variety
