Elemental Delivers Biggest Disney+ Movie Premiere of 2023

Elemental is Disney's biggest animated streaming debut since Turning Red in 2022.

By Charlie Ridgely

After starting slow at the box office, Elemental went on to be one of the biggest theatrical surprises of 2023. Pixar's latest film had a disastrous opening weekend, delivering the studio's worst theatrical debut in nearly 30 years, but bounced back to earn $484 million worldwide. Now, the movie is carrying that success into the world of streaming. Elemental just made its debut on Disney+ this past week, delivering the service's biggest streaming movie premiere of the year so far.

According to newly released numbers from Disney+, Elemental is the biggest film premiere of 2023, delivering an opening on the streaming bigger than the likes of The Little Mermaid and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Elemental racked up 26.4 million views in its first five days. Per Disney's press release, a view is "defined as total stream time divided by runtime."

In addition to being the biggest opening for a movie on Disney+ this year, Elemental boasts the biggest opening frame for any animated movie on Disney+ since Pixar's Turning Red hit the service in early 2022. 

This kind of streaming success after a stout run at the box office shows just how poorly Disney handled the release of Pixar movies like Luca and Turning Red. Those films were released directly onto Disney+ without theatrical releases. Elemental was able to deliver comparable streaming numbers after also making nearly half a billion dollars at the box office. Hopefully this means Pixar movies aren't relegated to streaming-only releases going forward.

Elemental's Major Influences

Ahead of Elemental's theatrical debut earlier this year, director Peter Sohn spoke with ComicBook.com about the filmmakers that influenced his unique Pixar love story.

"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. 

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"We watched so many movies for reference, for culture clash. That was also a big part of it," added producer Denise Ream. "Romantic comedies, we watched. Sohn continued, "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." 

Have you checked out Elemental since its Disney+ debut? What did you think? Let us know in the comments!

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