Elio crash lands with lowest opening weekend box office in Pixar history

The new sci-fi animation had an estimated production budget of $150 million

Pixar’s new sci-fi animated adventure Elio has earned largely positive reviews, but that critical acclaim has not been reflected at the box office.

The film is set to make $21 million across its opening weekend, the lowest opening weekend box office haul in Pixar history.

As Deadline reports, that total is substantially less than the $29.1 million made by the first ever Pixar film, 1995’s Toy Story, and lower than the $29.6 million made more recently by 2023’s Elemental.

Speaking to Associated Press, analyst David A. Gross of movie consulting firm FranchiseRe said: “This is a weak opening for a new Pixar movie. These would be solid numbers for another original animation film, but this is Pixar, and by Pixar’s remarkable standard, the opening is well below average.”

The film, which features the vocal talents of Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña and Brad Garrett, had an estimated production budget of $150 million.

Yonas Kibreab voices the 11-year-old title character in ‘Elio’ (© 2024 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.)

The only Pixar films to have made less at the box office are Soul (2020), Luca (2021) and Turning Red (2022) which all opened on streaming service Disney+ before limited theatrical runs.

The record box office for a Pixar movie’s opening weekend stands at $182.6 million, which was made by Incredibles 2 in 2018.

On social media, several fans lamented the poor box office showing for an original film, arguing that this is why studios increasingly back sequels and spin-offs.

One posted a meme showing Elio alongside recent Pixar originals like Soul and Luca and wrote: “Just a reminder the reason WHY you all are getting Toy Story 5. You NEED to show up for them instead of complaining the 'lack of marketing'. Pixar is the only animation studio left that prioritize original movies instead of sequels/prequels/spin- off or making an adaptation.”

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In a four-star review of the film, The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey wrote: “To the groove of Talking Heads’s ‘Once in a Lifetime’, orphaned 11-year-old Elio Solis (Yonas Kibreab) adjusts his homemade cape affixed with plastic stars, carves the words “ALIENS, ABDUCT ME” into sand, and spreads out on the beach like a starfish. In other words, Pixar is back in the zone, relishing its brief freedom before being dragged back to its desktops to make an umpteenth Toy Story sequel (number five, coming 2026).

“Elio is witty, sweet, and ready to shred your heartstrings like a teething puppy. It posits that we’re all conducting our own kind of intergalactic exploration, entering other people’s orbits in the hope of finding that elusive element we call friendship.”