In an article entitled “How Pixar’s Elemental Kept Its Fire Burning at the Box Office,” the Walt Disney Company has just sung the praises of Pixar’s newest summertime animated film.
An Underdog Rises to the Top
When Pixar’s Elemental debuted in June it was more spark than fire…” Disney diplomatically admitted, skating delicately around the film’s initial failures. “But Elemental didn’t evaporate at the box office. Audiences kept showing up.”
Credit: D23
The Disney article then proceeded to highlight how Elemental (the love story about Ember, a fire element, and Wade, a water element) increased its numbers bit by bit in the weeks after its opening in theaters.
“A Rare Accomplishment”
“The film directed by Peter Sohn crossed the $400 million mark at the global box office last week,” the article says. “Of that total, it’s made $148 million domestically. That’s about five times its domestic opening weekend haul, which is a rare accomplishment in a theatrical world that sees most moviegoers buy a ticket the opening weekend.”
“In fact, it’s so rare that no Pixar movie has had a multiple that high since the one that started it all: 1995’s Toy Story,” Disney enthused.
Elemental has a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score from audiences, as well as an “A” on CinemaScore, and Disney emphasized that “it’s also been a solid choice for moviegoers of all ages during a summer in which family films have been hard to find.”
Leah Lewis as Ember Lumen and Mamoudou Athie as Wade Ripple in ‘Elemental’. Credit: Disney/Pixar
In addition, Elemental is apparently “the first original animated film from any studio to reach the $400 million mark since 2017,” making its slow-but-steady success all the more relevant (and what some people called “miraculous“)!
Love on an International Scale
Elemental also apparently received a big boost from “international audiences [who] have especially embraced the film.”
Tony Chambers, Disney’s EVP of Theatrical Distribution, was quoted in the Disney article and said that the film’s “global gross to date has been propelled by top performing international markets including South Korea, Mexico, France, and the UK.”
In South Korea specifically, the Pixar Animation Studios movie “has reached 6 million admissions, meaning that one out of every eight people in Korea have seen it.”
Ember and Wade in ‘Elemental’. Credit: Disney
“Recently it’s been more challenging for original animated and live action IP to break through. But you can’t create a franchise without taking a swing, and no other studio has taken more swings than Disney,” Chambers finished.
Did you see Elemental yet? Do you think that Pixar is finally getting back into its groove?
