Disney is the king of the franchise. From the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Star Wars to continually remaking Disney animated classics as live-action films, the studio rarely seems to take a bad step when it comes to giving fans more of what they’ve shown they already want. But last year the studio did make a couple of missteps, at least from a box office standpoint, as the first Pixar movie to open in theaters in a couple of years, a spinoff of the iconic Toy Story franchise, flopped pretty hard. It turns out Lightyear lost Disney over $100 million.
Deadline recently took a look at some of the biggest box office flops of 2022, and while Lightyear wasn’t the worst, it wasn’t even the biggest bomb from Disney, it’s possibly the most surprising movie on the list. While Lightyear was certainly a different take on the material than the Toy Story movies, one would think a movie with a popular character would do well, but that wasn’t the case.
Lightyear only grossed $267 million between box office revenue and other sources, and it’s estimated the movie cost Disney $373 million between production and marketing, coming out to a $106 million loss. The Walt Disney Studios still had a hell of a year overall thanks to movies like Avatar: The Way of Water that more than made up for the shortfall, that’s still a not-insubstantial amount of money.
Lightyear certainly didn’t review as well as the Toy Story movies, which may have been part of the reason the movie wasn’t a box office hit. It was also a bit of an unusual project, being a spinoff film that wasn’t directly tied to the franchise that fans knew. Chris Evans took over as the voice of Buzz Lightyear from Tim Allen, a move that clearly confused some people.
There was also the fact that Lightyear was the first Pixar movie since Onward to be released in theaters. It’s possible that fans had become used to seeing Pixar movies at home using their Disney+ subscription, not on the big screen, and thus decided to wait until Lightyear arrived on the streaming service. It will be interesting to see how the upcoming Disney movie Elemental, the next Pixar movie hitting theaters, that has no franchise connections, will do at the box office
If Lightyear was the worst of things for Disney in 2022 that would be one thing, but as mentioned earlier Lightyear wasn’t the biggest bomb of the year. That dubious distinction goes to Strange World which according to estimates lost the studio nearly $300 million. The movie cost less to make than Lightyear, and the studio spent a great deal less on marketing, but the movie brought in an anemic $120 million in total revenue.