If you haven't seen Walt Disney's (DIS 2.47%) Elemental at your local multiplex, you're not alone. The latest animated film cracked $125 million in cumulative domestic ticket sales in its fifth weekend of screenings. Based on current average theater admissions, less than 4% of the country has seen the movie at a theater.
This may seem like a pretty rough showing for a company that got its start as a pioneer in animation 100 years ago, but it's not so bad once you take a closer look. Given Disney's dreadful performance on the full-length animated front since the pandemic, Elemental is faring pretty well on a relative basis.
- Elemental is Disney's first animated feature to top $125 million in domestic ticket sales since 2019.
- Take out all of the better-performing sequels in recent years -- Incredibles 2 and Ralph Breaks The Internet in 2018 as well as Toy Story 4 and Frozen II in 2019 -- and you have to go back to Coco in 2017 to find the last non-sequel that's been more successful in collecting domestic box office receipts.
- Elemental has legs, holding up considerably better than Disney's previous pandemic-era winner at this point. Lightyear sold just $1.4 million in admissions in its fifth domestic weekend last summer. Elemental delivered $8.7 million in ticket sales this past weekend.
Drawn that way
Hopes weren't high when Elemental hit theaters in mid-June. Variety was predicting that the film would generate just $35 million in stateside admissions in its premiere weekend, the softest start for a Pixar film in the modern era. It fared even worse, failing to crack $30 million domestically at the box office.
Somewhere along the way, the opposites-attract tale, set in a world where fire, water, land, and air residents live together, grew legs. The film has never been the top draw for any of its first five weekends, but it was the fifth most popular film this past weekend. Pixar's Lightyear had less than a sixth of Elemental's ticket sales in its fifth weekend last summer, and it was the 10th most popular movie for that given weekend.
Image source: Getty Images.
Elemental has a decent 74% approval rating from critics polled by reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, but that's not enough sometimes. It's the same score that Lightyear had coming out on the same June weekend last year. However, 94% of audiences are recommending the movie, a much higher score than Disney's recent cinema releases.
The movie is also faring well overseas, raking in $186.4 million internationally. It now has $311.7 million in global box office receipts. Lightyear ended its theatrical run last summer with international admissions lagging the already disappointing domestic sales and just $226.4 million in worldwide ticketing revenue.
Disney still has a long way to go before investors can comfortably say that the media stock is truly back in theatrical animation. It had none of the top three animated features in 2022, and despite Elemental's relative success the two biggest domestic blockbusters of 2023 aren't Disney's handiwork. However, just the fact that the two top films of 2023 -- The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse -- are rendered show that moviegoers are still excited about seeing animated films at the multiplex.
The next big test for the House of Mouse will come in November when Wish hits theaters ahead of the historically potent holiday season. It seems to have many of the key ingredients that have fueled Disney's biggest hits since 1989. Elio and Inside Out 2 will follow early next year. There's still time for a fairy tale finish to Disney's beleaguered theatrical animation division.
