The stumble out of the gate by Elio, which had the worst box office opening of any Pixar film ever at just $21 million, highlights a “concerning trend,” in the view of one Wall Street analyst.
Despite a Rotten Tomatoes score of 84%, which placed it in the top 30% of all reviewed films annually, the Disney-Pixar release wound up a poster child for the times, as Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro has analyzed.
Doug Creutz, who covers the media sector for TD Cowan, says the gap between original animation and sequels or derivative properties has grown “enormously wide” since Covid. And that divide likely will have consequences.
“We expect movie studios to react to this clear trend by greenlighting fewer original IP animated films (don’t blame film execs, blame audiences),” Creutz wrote. “The issue, of course, is that without new hit properties, a studio cannot grow its IP portfolio. This could be particularly problematic for Disney, which depends on its animated film/parks/consumer products flywheel to help drive overall company growth.”
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Investors appeared equally wary early in Monday’s trading, sending Disney shares down 2%, but they rallied to close up a fraction at $117.75. Individual film performance seldom affects stock prices anymore, though the chilling implications of a malfunction in the theme-park assembly line certainly is enough to give the market pause. That was one reason why Disney booted Elio from 2024 to 2025, especially to avoid a misfire as CEO Bob Iger faced a proxy fight.
“Intellectual property really has become the cornerstone of the modern theme park industry,” Dennis Spiegel, CEO of consultancy International Theme Park Services, told Bloomberg TV recently. At about $34 billion a year in parks revenue, Disney dwarfs its competitors but looks to new properties to refresh its pipeline. While Inside Out 2 and Moana 2 smashed records and the upcoming Toy Story 5 is shaping up as a juggernaut, none will provide a foundation for new park attractions or experiences.
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Since 2022, Creutz observed, the average gross for original animated titles released by Disney (including Pixar) and Universal (including Illumination) has been $412 million. That’s less than half of the $844 million average for the seven animated sequel installments released over the same span. The analyst noted that even that stark comparison involves a major asterisk – he included The Super Mario Bros. Movie as an original even though its $1.36 billion haul was driven by it being based on a long-popular video game series.