“Elio” proves that the Pixar name is no longer enough to put butts in seats, but is the studio facing an existential crisis? Animator Jason Donati says, “They’re going to have to reinvent themselves.”
Things are not looking up for Pixar after the legendary animation studio recently had its worst box office opening ever for “Elio.”
Against a $250 million budget, the animated science fiction film brought in $21 million in its opening weekend. That puts it below Pixar’s previous lowest opener, “Elemental,” which opened to $30 million in 2023, although it proved to have a long tail.
Despite the outsized success of “Inside Out 2” last year, the initial performance of “Elio” paints a despairing picture for Pixar, a revered name in American animation, but does this mean the beginning of the end for Pixar?
It might not mean the studio is doomed, but it’s definitely a wake-up call for Pixar, says Jason Donati, an award-winning animator and teaching professor at Northeastern University.
“You can’t just use the brand Pixar anymore to just drive butts to seats,” Donati says.
However, it’s also a warning to the industry at large. “Elio” faced an uphill battle from the start largely because it’s an original story, not a sequel or remake, coming out at a time that the entertainment industry has never been more risk-averse, Donati explains.
“I don’t think it’s a Pixar issue. I don’t think it’s an animation issue. I think it’s an entertainment issue,” Donati says. “Hollywood … is very reluctant to greenlight anything that’s brand new. It’s just the risk associated with it, and because of that, you have to keep going back to the well.”
“Elio” was released against two live-action remakes of popular animated films: “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Lilo & Stitch.” On the other side of the demographic spectrum, “28 Years Later,” a sequel to zombie film “28 Days Later,” coming out a literal 23 years later, also hit theaters the same weekend.
However, the box office performance of “Elio” is not just a story about an industry that’s reluctant to tell original stories. Donati says the film embodies a shift in Pixar’s more recent work that lacks the visual and thematic innovation of its previous work. The studio has settled “into this stage visually and design-wise where they are cosplaying themselves,” he says.
“It’s almost like you get too big and you’ve constrained yourself into this idea of what it means to be Pixar,” Donati says. “They’re afraid to move out of it, and because of that it’s actually what’s boxing them in.”
It also comes at the exact moment that Pixar is facing more competition than ever.
Its direct competitors –– Dreamworks and Sony –– are taking big swings visually, even as they rely on intellectual property like Spider-Man and Puss in Boots. Meanwhile, independent animation studios are finding incredible success on the outskirts. “Flow,” a wordless animated film about animals made by a small Latvian team, won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature this year over Pixar’s “Inside Out 2.”
“It’s a snake that’s eating its own tail,” Donati says. “If you never take a risk, if you never swing for the home run, you just kind of are going to hit singles all day. … The independent studios or the studios that are willing to swing the bat and not feel so confined are going to be the winners here eventually.”
The relative success of films like “Flow” –– and failure of “Elio” –– also points to a more foundational issue for the animation industry: costs. Donati says that studios have started looking for ways to lower their production costs and timelines so a film like “Elio” doesn’t take several years and hundreds of millions of dollars to make.
Studios and independent creators are already exploring whether AI could play a role in making production more affordable, Donati explains, although how it’s implemented is still an open and contentious question. Even if AI isn’t the way forward, he says ballooning budgets shouldn’t be the norm. Lowering production costs and budgets would redefine success in an industry that desperately needs to refocus its attention, he says.
“Do we have to blow out the weekend and have $50 million [on] weekend one to be a success if I get the total budget cost down?” Donati says. “No, it can still be a very profitable film and a very profitable studio and [we can] maybe make more films. … The lower the budget, the more risks you can take, the more interesting things you can do.”
With massive budgets, the struggling prospects for original films and more competition for audiences than ever, is Pixar on the way out? Donati says it wouldn’t be the first time a Disney-owned animation studio made a comeback. After Disney released “Aladdin” in 1982, it struggled for years to recapture the magic of its animated classics. But eventually, after some leadership changes, shifts in direction and soul searching, it found a way back into the hearts and minds of audiences.
The same will have to happen for Pixar if it hopes to have a future, Donati says.
“[Pixar is] going to have to reconcile with the fact that they won’t just make money because it says Pixar on it,” he says. “They’re going to have to reinvent themselves. They’re going to have to understand what AI brings into this. They’re going to have to understand, maybe, the new appetite for shorter, more dopamine-driven entertainment. They’re going to have to go through it a bit.”