“Elemental” had the unfortunate distinction of opening directly against “The Flash” in June and, as one would expect, the animated original lost badly to the big superhero movie. But “The Flash” disappeared from theaters in, well, a flash, while Pixar’s good name and solid word of mouth kept audiences coming. So that seemingly disastrous $29.6 million opening wasn’t as horrible as it may have seemed. Currently, the film has earned $145 million domestically, meaning it has taken in nearly five times that opening weekend number thus far. That sort of thing rarely happens for a big-budget film nowadays.
Part of what has been so helpful is that Disney has held strong and not rushed to put director Peter Sohn’s movie on Disney+ or VOD. The studio has allowed audiences the opportunity to discover the film and that has paid off. Even with the $200 million budget, it has a real shot at getting to a break-even point in theaters, or close to it. More importantly, it has demonstrated the value of Pixar as a theatrically viable entity after “Luca,” “Turning Red,” and “Soul” were sent directly to Disney+. This was a mistake and one that Disney CEO Bob Iger has acknowledged openly. Thanks to these strong numbers, Pixar’s future once again looks very bright.
“Elemental” is in theaters now.