There's no denying that Elio had a bad opening weekend for a new $150 million budgeted Pixar release. Debuting to $20.8 million (just slightly up from the $19 million bow of the cheapie January 2014 animated movie The Nut Job), Elio had the lowest Pixar bow in history. It was a far cry from the $60+ million bows Pixar original consistently hit starting with Monsters Inc. in November 2001.
However, stewing on Elio's debut (as the box office bimbo I am) and the opening weekends for the handful of other non-sequel animated movies released theatrically in the 2020s, I began to wonder something. How far off are the $35 million bow of The Wild Robot or the $29 million opening of Elemental from pre-COVID non-sequel animation bows? Elio has been described by Wall Street analysts (the experts in all things art) as something that could "hasten the demise of original animation" theatrically. However, what were the openings for non-sequel animated family movies like before COVID?
Let's dive into that today and see if 2020s features like Elio and Encanto are off from their pre-COVID brethren. Before March 2020 (when COVID-19 shut down theaters), Box Office Mojo circa. late July 2019 reports that 45 fully-animated films (including the largely-animated The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water) opened to $50+ million domestically in their wide release debuts (including the two Frozen movies, not listed on the chart). 21 of those films were sequels, spin-offs, and remakes. Three more (The Simpsons Movie, The Lorax, and The LEGO Movie) were the first big-screen adaptations of universally known properties. The remaining 21 were non-sequels media based on obscure pieces of pre-existing media (like The Boss Baby and Big Hero 6) or totally original features.
The default norm for non-sequel animated movies, particularly before 2008, was to actually open sub-$50 million and then leg out like crazy. Walt Disney Animation Studios, for instance, never had a movie open to $50+ million in its three-day weekend until Frozen in 2013. Mid-2000s Dreamworks Animation hits like Shark Tale and Madagascar, meanwhile, debuted to $47 million each, with the latter doing more than four times its bow in its opening weekend.
Speaking of DreamWorks, Shrek famously $42.34 million and played endlessly over summer 2001 to do more than six times its opening weekend. As late as 2018, pop culture phenomenon Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (which had the Spider-Man name at its back) opened to $35.36 million before doing an eye-popping 5.38 times its opening weekend thanks to extraordinary word-of-mouth. Meanwhile, in early 2011, Rio and Rango each debuted with $39 and $38 million, respectively, despite massive marketing campaigns for each. Roughly a decade before COVID upended the entire theatrical ecosystem, there was already a firm ceiling for how big typical non-sequel animated films could go. It's why even in 2005, the last year when the mere existence of a CG-animated film was enough to get people's attention, Blue Sky's Robots opened to $36 million rather than $66 million.
Blue Sky's actually a good example of the eternal box office restrictions of non-sequel animated movies at the domestic box office. Its only non-Ice Age titles to open to $40+ million in North America were Horton Hears a Who! and The Peanuts Movie, both adaptations of famous children's media. Peanuts even followed in the footsteps of several hand-drawn (though narratively unrelated) movies from the 60s and 70s starring Charlie Brown and company. Given these realities, it's worth asking...how did certain original animated movies like Kung Fu Panda and The Incredibles get to $60+ million bows?
It may sound redundant and simple, but part of it really is that those films had killer premises. Promising "Jack Black is a panda who does kung fu" or "what if the emotions in your head were real?" is a lot more enticing to general audiences than "what if a blue macaw sounded like the main kid from The Squid and the Whale?" However, those titles also got a lift from an external rising tide. Pixar, Disney Animation, DreamWorks Animation, and Illumination each had a peak era where they could sell anything to general audiences of all ages.
In the late 2000s, DreamWorks had enough audience goodwill to get Monsters vs. Aliens and Kung Fu Panda to $55+ million bows each. Ditto with Pixar in the 2000s or Illumination in July 2016 (when The Secret Life of Pets dropped) fresh off multiple beloved Despicable Me outings. Combining something as powerful as post-Frozen goodwill with a strong marketing campaign is how Zootopia gets to $75 million. Even in these high times, though, these studios couldn't launch every non-sequel to Incredibles-sized numbers. How to Train Your Dragon and Ratatouille had initially "disappointing" sub-$50 million bows before legging it out to $200+ million domestically each.
These numbers are not meant to suddenly make Elio's lackluster debut "good." Instead, they're meant to highlight how theatrical non-sequel animated family movies could be a precarious financial space even before the 2020s. Now the major studios have taken active measures to further undercut this space. As I mentioned in a recent Pajiba piece, Onward's pre-release tracking already put it on pace for one of Pixar's lowest opening weekend. That reality suggested, after a decade of sequels, audiences weren't automatically stoked to check out an original Pixar feature like they were in 2008. That was already going to be an immense challenge before Disney conditioned audiences to view "original Pixar movies=streaming slop" by sending quality features like Soul and Turning Red to Disney+.
Between prioritizng streaming for years and clogging theaters with endless franchise fare (if you keep telling audiences only sequels belong on the big screen, they're bound to believe it), it's no wonder 2020s original animated films that aren't The Wild Robot are having box office woes. In 2011, Rango (which did decent business overall) opened to "only" $38 million despite eight-and-a-half months of relentless marketing. That should've been a sign for major studios to nurture further original animated features, not tilt the cinematic landscape further and further away from such titles.
Now, admittedly, these lower opening weekends for non-sequel animated movies are largely because of changing ticket prices. The Lion King's $40.88 million in June 1994 would be roughly $88 million in 2025, for example. How to Train Your Dragon's 2010 bow, meanwhile, would be $64.59 million today. Elio doing less than a third of Dragon's debut speaks to how much the theatrical landscape has changed in just 15 years.
However, the practice of these titles opening lower than sequels and then legging out had constantly endured over the year. The Prince of Egypt turned a $14 million bow into a $101 million domestic cume in 1998, while Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs ("only" the 32nd biggest opener of 2009) transformed a $30.4 million bow into a $124 million domestic finish. Wall Street has also often panicked over these opening weekend numbers for original animated features before these titles legged out to outstanding domestic totals. Most famously, How to Train Your Dragon's opening weekend sent Dreamworks Animation's stock plummeting just before it became one of the leggiest wide releases of the 2010s.
Though Wall Street's short memory would say otherwise, non-sequel animated family movies have always opened lower and then legged out like crazy as audiences discover these titles over time. A 2020s pop culture landscape offering new big-budget animated movies on streaming services (Sony, stop sending acclaimed titles like KPop Demon Hunters to Netflix!) and rushing titles to premium-video-on-demand retailers works directly against that reality. There are many reasons Elio came up short at the box office, including its lack of appeal to older viewers and Pixar's default animation style no longer being out of touch with the times.
However, Elio also entered a modern theatrical landscape that has added endless extra challenges for non-sequel animated films, which have often had trouble scoring $50+ million debuts. Instead of creating more space for the next generation of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and Rango's to have better opening weekends, major movie studios (spurred on by Wall Street analysts) have gone in the opposite direction. Through making short-term money selling animated features to Netflix or dumping Pixar movies to Disney+, the already challenging task of convincing families to come to theaters and see a non-franchise title has become nearly impossible.