Pixar's Elemental Is Now The Biggest Original Hollywood Movie Since The Pandemic
Even though things didn't start out on the best foot, Pixar's "Elemental" has had a downright astonishing run at the box office since it opened last month and, in its seventh weekend, managed to cross a pretty impressive milestone. Amazingly enough, it now ranks as the highest-grossing original Hollywood film released in theaters since the pandemic began. Yes, really.
After adding $3.4 million in its most recent weekend domestically, "Elemental" now sits at $395.2 million worldwide. That is currently more than "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" ($356 million), which was released two weeks after Pixar's latest. The film overtook Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" ($365.3 million) to take the title of Hollywood's biggest original of the pandemic era. As many of you will surely recall, Warner Bros. opted to release "Tenet" at the height of Covid in late 2020 to help give theaters something to show after they had been shut down for months on end. Would the film have made more in 2021? Almost certainly, but the way the chips fell, it had a tough road to maneuver.
The only original released since theaters shut down in 2020 that made more was the Chinese mega-hit "Hi, Mom," which pulled in a massive $822 million in 2021. It was the third-biggest movie that year behind only "The Battle at Lake Changjin" ($902.5 million) and "Spider-Man: No Way Home" ($1.91 billion). But as far as Hollywood-produced original movies go? Disney and Pixar's animated movie about forbidden love stands alone. And it's not done yet, as the film is still in the top 10 on the domestic charts and may hang on for at least one more weekend.
An incredible turn of fortune for Pixar
"Elemental" had the unfortunate distinction of opening directly against "The Flash" in June and, as one would expect, the animated original lost badly to the big superhero movie. But "The Flash" disappeared from theaters in, well, a flash, while Pixar's good name and solid word of mouth kept audiences coming. So that seemingly disastrous $29.6 million opening wasn't as horrible as it may have seemed. Currently, the film has earned $145 million domestically, meaning it has taken in nearly five times that opening weekend number thus far. That sort of thing rarely happens for a big-budget film nowadays.
Part of what has been so helpful is that Disney has held strong and not rushed to put director Peter Sohn's movie on Disney+ or VOD. The studio has allowed audiences the opportunity to discover the film and that has paid off. Even with the $200 million budget, it has a real shot at getting to a break-even point in theaters, or close to it. More importantly, it has demonstrated the value of Pixar as a theatrically viable entity after "Luca," "Turning Red," and "Soul" were sent directly to Disney+. This was a mistake and one that Disney CEO Bob Iger has acknowledged openly. Thanks to these strong numbers, Pixar's future once again looks very bright.
"Elemental" is in theaters now.