Leah Lewis, the Nancy Drew star set to headline Elemental, says that her upbringing in Florida has given her a life-long relationship with Disney, where she used to be able to visit pretty regularly, and where she had family members who were employees at the park for years. Disney hopes that the movie can recapture some of the magic from projects like Inside Out and Toy Story, which took abstractions and anthropomorphized them into heartwarming and heart-wrenching animated features. Following on the heels of Lightyear and Strange World, which got solid reviews but underperformed at the box office, the hope is that Elemental, followed by some exciting sequels coming in the next couple of years, can get Pixar back to basics.
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“It’s so cool hearing another Floridian just be downright obsessed with Disney, because when you’re in Orlando, you can’t ignore it,” Lewis told ComicBook.com’s Jamie Jirak. “I’m glad that I didn’t even want it, ignore it, because Disney Kid through and through. My mom worked at Disney, dad worked at Disney, so did grandma. Now I’m working at Disney in a different capacity, but I used to go to the parks all the time as a little kid, and that was my childhood. Disney gave me the ability to dream big and actually believe that maybe I could do that for real.”
Directed by Peter Sohn (The Good Dinosaur, Partly Cloudy short) and produced by Denise Ream (The Good Dinosaur, Cars 2), the film journeys alongside an unlikely pair, Ember and Wade, in a city where fire-, water-, land- and air-residents live together. The fiery young woman and the go-with-the-flow guy are about to discover something elemental: how much they actually have in common.
“My parents emigrated from Korea in the early 1970s and built a bustling grocery store in the Bronx,” Sohn said back in May. “We were among many families who ventured to a new land with hopes and dreams — all of us mixing into one big salad bowl of cultures, languages, and beautiful little neighborhoods. That’s what led me to Elemental.”
Strange World and Elemental are the first original properties to head to theaters from Pixar since the start of the pandemic, with movies like Onward and Turning Red debuting on Disney+ while Lightyear went to theaters. The latter underperformed somewhat, which might make Disney a little nervous when it comes to rolling out a pair of brand-new ideas in the near future. The last Pixar film to do huge numbers was Toy Story 4, which hit before the start of the pandemic. The last original story to make it huge was Coco, which made over $800 million in 2017.
Still, in spite of some recent disappointments, a Pixar movie is one of the closest things Disney has to a sure thing at the box office — and even more so with critics. The Disney+-released Soul and Turning Red both earned rave reviews and have been consistent performers on the streaming site. After Elemental, Pixar has another sequel coming in the form of Inside Out 2, which is scheduled for a 2024 release date.
Elemental is set to debut in theaters tomorrow after “preview night” screenings today.
