At this point 50% of Pixars movies are forgettable, so the brand alone isn't enough to sell them even if they still do have some good movies the last 5 years. There should be a Pixar movie every 2 years rather than averaging about 1.5 per year.

Reviews seem positive but not overly so

The trailers for this has been weak. Don't really see this doing more than 35m opening but hopefully it's good. Had there never been the damage to the brand this would still open to 40m+

Something like $40m/$130m is possible. That would probably be a win at this stage.

If it does more than 27m it will be the highest opening for an original animated film since the pandemic

56 on metacritic yikes

DOA For sure. Already presales are atrocious and reviews at this level wont help a Pixar movie for sure.

It sounds like it's a romcom homage. I think they should have advertised it more that way.

But isn't it expected that pre-sales are nothing? I mean, it isn't based on anything and it's not a sequel or from an established franchise. All it has going for it is it's made by Pixar, whose brand has been hit in recent years. I wouldn't expect a ton of people to be rushing out to secure opening day tickets. It will be the film that has the arduous task of building Pixar up into an animation powerhouse again ... it'll fail at that obviously, but something has to be the first attemp.

This situation is even more annoying since it follows two great films (Soul, Turning Red) and a good film (Luca) that weren't even released in theaters.

Pixar's theatrical return could be their first poorly reviewed film in over 10 years (Cars 2 in 2011) if early reviews reflect the masses.

Skip out on three well-received films (or 2 if you want to argue Soul not getting a theatrical release made sense in the middle of COVID) only to release their first potentially rotten film in over a decade... SMH.

I don't think this will go rotten, overall critics I think will be more lenient than the Cannes ones that reviewed it. But a 60s to low 70s RT isn't good enough to make up for the presales which are atrocious. It really needed that "this film's incredible, go see it" bump out of cannes..

It feels even odd that this was at Cannes. Now, I'm no Cannes expert, but I have lived through enough of them to know that this type of film doesn't usually screen there. I feel like they set themselves up for a pasting by showing it to a pompous Cannes crowd.

Bad reviews for an original Pixar movie??? What is going on over in the Mouse House?

Disney should have moved The Haunted Mansion to September/October and given its July 28th date to Elemental. It'd have TMNT in its second weekend, but after that, the market is devoid of any family films for a long time (all I see is a Paw Patrol film at the end of September). And The Haunted Mansion would have done better in the fall too.

June is Pixar's month, but this one where it is should have been avoided. It's the worst date possible for it, really, for basically the rest of the year.

Ugh at Elemental finishing with $495,851,987. One small re-release please to add that extra $4.15M to get to half a billion.

I would love an Elemental / Inside Out 2 double feature. Feels thematically a bit similar.