By Pixar’s “Elemental” debuted to just $29 million in mid-June this year, the lowest debut for a Pixar movie since 1995, leading to many quickly writing off the film as a box-office bomb and a notable failure of the year so far.
Then, inexplicably, the film found success – holding on with consistent performance as the weeks went by and other films came and went. By the time it was done, it had racked up $154 million domestically and a total of $495 million worldwide.
Saddled with a $200 million budget, it’s not a major profit generator for Pixar in the way some of their pre-pandemic titles were. Even so, the turnaround is remarkable and one of the year’s more feel-good film news stories.
This week, the film’s director Peter Sohn spoke with The Playlist about the film and was asked when he suspected it was turning into a hit:
“In the beginning, I was just worried about, ‘Oh, the film’s not connecting.’ Some people hadn’t even seen the movie and they were already writing it off… after its opening weekend and how it underperformed and all of that, was really challenging.
It was maybe two weeks later, someone told me to, ‘Did you check Twitter?’ And I was like, ‘No, I haven’t been’…. There were just people that had seen the movie that were talking about Wade and that he’s the perfect boyfriend. And then it just went into this list of people connecting to some of the first gen, second generation issues.
As I was reading through it, I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, some people are connecting to it.’ And I would get more from friends around me talking about people that were now going to the theaters from word of mouth. Someone telling me, ‘I just heard this movie was really good.’ And then it started growing.”
He adds he was most pleased for the film’s crew as the team “had put so much in there… I just didn’t want the crew to be disappointed and I just wanted them to be proud of the work they had done.”
He sat amazed as the movie “wasn’t being taken out of theaters and people kept going and going and going” and even survived “the Barbenheimer life onslaught”. It also became a big hit on streamer Disney+, pulling in 26.4 million views over its first five days.
Ultimately, he says he: “just feel[s] super lucky that it’s connecting”. “Elemental” is currently available on Disney+ and other digital platforms.
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