Pixar Suffers A ‘Soul’-Crushing Defeat At Box Office
Pixar, once the unstoppable powerhouse of American theatrical animation, suffered yet another blow to its reputation as moviegoers rejected this weekend’s theatrical release of Soul, a film that has been available on the Disney+ streaming service since late 2020.
Its release in 1,350 locations grossed a meager $429,000 (estimated) over three days, and $557,000 over the four-day Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend.
Soul landed in 19th place, behind the 9th weekend of Dreamworks Animation’s Trolls Band Together, which delivered $450,000 from 618 theaters over three days, or twice as much per theater ($728) as the launch of Soul ($318).
Disney’s decision to launch Soul in theaters, followed by theatrical releases for Turning Red and Luca in the coming months, is an interesting if not particularly well conceived experiment to see if a market exists for Pixar films that have already been released (and remain available) on streaming.
There was an opportunistic incentive too as the theatrical release calendar for family animation in the first half of 2024 is bleak, with just one major animation release scheduled through the end of April. Further, Disney had scored nearly $10 million from last fall’s re-release of Henry Selick’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, a 30-year-old animated film that has already been re-released to theaters multiple times.
But Disney’s value proposition for these Pixar releases revolved around the artistic merit of the films. A press release said that moviegoers could experience these Pixar films “the way they were meant to be seen.” In a new interview published on the Disney Company’s corporate site, Soul director and Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter, reiterated the idea that the visual and aural experience of these films was “a different beast” in theaters. Said Docter:
They were made to be seen on the big screen. Every frame has been pored over by the artists and technicians here, and it’s a different experience. Hopefully, people have seen them on Disney+, and we’re very thankful to have had that platform to release them because otherwise the pandemic would have put them on the shelf. But we’re really excited for people to go back to theaters with their friends and see it together. The scale and the community are all reasons to go.
That pitch, however, wasn’t enough to convince economically-strapped families to fork over money to see a film that they’re already likely paying for through their Disney+ subscriptions. Even Disney itself didn’t seem fully committed to the idea of a theatrical release as evidenced by the lack of a marketing campaign to support Soul’s release.
Some attempt to promote the theatrical launch though would have been advisable, if only to avoid the incredibly bad optics of having Soul be seen as a theatrical clunker, especially after the film had already established itself as a winner. Soul was a major hit on streaming, ending up no. 1 on the Nielsen charts with nearly 1.7 billion total minutes of streaming in just its first week alone. It was also a critical hit, winning two Oscars (animated feature and score), two BAFTAs, the Golden Globe, the Critics Choice, and seven Annie Awards, including best feature.
Perhaps a Fathom Events-style limited screening event targeting animation and Pixar fans would have been more appropriate than a release targeting general family audiences. Or a commemorative piece of art to honor the theatrical release could have made this release feel special. Whatever they do, Disney needs to develop a new gameplan and quick before they do similar damage to the reputations of Turning Red and Luca, both of which will release theatrically in the coming months. Having three Pixar films bomb theatrically immediately before the release of Inside Out 2 can’t be a scenario that anyone at Disney or Pixar wants to see happen.
Other box office notes:
In its fourth weekend, Universal-Illumination’s Migration grossed an estimated $8.3m over the four-day holiday, and now has $87.8m in the U.S. With international added in, the film is just shy of the $175m mark.
Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron, released through GKIDS domestically, picked up $1.36m over the holiday weekend. Six-weekend total is $41.9m and it will soon eclipse Pokemon: The Movie 2000 (43.7m) to become the third-highest-grossing anime release ever in America.
