Pixar Chief Blames Disney+ for Elemental’s Struggles

Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter says that Elemental‘s early struggles at the box office stemmed from Disney+ and the company’s overall streaming strategy. In a recent conversation with The New York Times, the executive discussed the slow start Elemental had at the box office. He said that driving subscriber growth for Disney+ has has a palpable affect on some of the recent Pixar movies. Titles like Luca, Turning Red, and Soul all hit the streaming service instead of getting their big day in the theater. That means they never got the chance to earn a lot of that money back. For movies like Elemental and Encanto, there’s no telling what they could have earned with more robust theatrical windows.

“There has been an overall shift in viewing habits as a result of the pandemic, but it’s also specific to Disney+,” Docter told the outlet. “We’ve told people, ‘Hey, all of this is going to be available to you on Disney+!’”

As things creak toward a close with the SAG-AFTRA strike, the landscape for Hollywood on the other side will be different. The days of the Disney+ theatrical windows being so close to release will probably be over. Unfortunately for Pixar, the budgets for these projects will likely take a hit as well. Disney CEO Bob Iger signaled that change along with an avalanche of sequels earlier this year.

Elemental Cleans Up On Disney+

One thing is certain, Elemental is not the absolute disaster that a lot of first reactions deemed the movie. Elemental was the most-watched movie premiere of 2023 on Disney+. The film stands among the Top 10 of Disney+ premieres of all time. Elemental brought in 26.4 million views during those first five days on the platform. Peter Sohn directed the feature and thought the tale of two very different people finding some common ground would resonate with audiences. It looks like he was right.

The movie also presented a major win for Pixar as the animated film was the biggest hit on the platform since Turning Red. Elemental also stands as the most-viewed Disney+ movie premiere of all time in Latin America, also passing upTurning Red.

Elemental’s Varied Influences

ComicBook.com spoke with director Peter Sohn ahead of Elemental‘s theatrical debut earlier this year. We asked the filmmakers about the love story at the heart of the movie and where they drew inspiration from. “The visuals were definitely a combo of Gordon Willis and how he would shoot the cities between The Godfather and Manhattan and those movies, for sure. There was that. There was [Jean-Pierre] Jeunet. There’s a lot of French love in this, for sure, in terms of how they made cities like postcards in some of their movies,” Sohn explained. 

“We watched so many movies for reference, for culture clash. That was also a big part of it,” producer Denise Ream told us. “Romantic comedies, we watched. Sohn added, “Yeah. There is a director, though, that I don’t talk about a lot, but it was Norman Jewison. He did Fiddler on the Roof and Moonstruck. Oh, both of us, that’s one of our favorite movies individually.”

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