‘Elemental’ Earns $2.4 Million at Thursday Box Office
“Elemental,” an opposites-attract love story set in a world of, well, elements, began its domestic box office jaunt with $2.4 million in Thursday previews. With merely decent reviews (75% fresh and 6.5/10 on Rotten Tomatoes) and little being sold beyond “Hey, it’s the next Pixar film!”), the Peter Sohn-directed flick could struggle to match the $29 million Fri-Sun debut (amid a $39 million Wed-Sun launch) of “Toy Story” back in 1995, let alone the over/under $39 million Fri-Sun debuts of “The Good Dinosaur” in 2015 and “Onward” (which opened a week before COVID shut down the world) in 2020.
Just running the numbers, if “Elemental” legs over the weekend like “Lightyear” ($51 million from a $5.2 million Thursday), it’ll open with just $23.5 million by Sunday night. Being more optimistic, however unlikely, if “Elemental” legs like “Cars 3” ($53 million/$2.6 million), well, then it opens with $49 million and you can ignore the next few paragraphs of doom-n-gloom.
Generally speaking, animated movies tend to make less of their money on Thursday night, since general audiences are more inclined to wait until the proper weekend to take their kids. However, the franchise-friendly likes of “Toy Story 4” ($120 million/$12 million) and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” ($120 million/$17.4 million) tended to play closer to live-action franchise installments, as did “Lightyear.” Splitting the difference, if “Elemental” earned 7.5% of its overall weekend take on Thursday, that’s still an underwhelming $32 million weekend.
The picture debuted to muted response as the Cannes closing night flick only for its overall critical reception to improve after more domestic critics sampled the goods. However, “Elemental” is facing a world where former Disney CEO Bob Chapek essentially turned Pixar into a Disney+/streaming brand to boost subscriptions in 2020, 2021 and early 2022 only to unleash the “nobody asked for this” “Lightyear” origin story into global theatrical release last summer.
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Even aside from turning “Soul,” “Luca” and “Turning Red” into cannon fodder for the streaming wars, “Elementals” faces a new and pre-COVID normal where original animation has struggled mightily against surefire sequels like “Frozen II” and “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and IP cash-ins like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”
Pixar’s “Coco,” which topped $800 million worldwide in late 2017, is still the last blockbuster original toon. Meanwhile, the likes of “Abominable” and “Onward” struggled. Moreover, much of the post-2019 slate of potentially promising non-sequel animated films, think Sony’s “The Mitchells vs. the Machines,” Paramount’s “Rumble” and Pixar’s “Turning Red,” went mostly straight to streaming. Heading into summer 2023, we don’t yet know if the poor box office for “Encanto” and “Strange World” is a Disney problem or an overall Hollywood animation ecosystem problem.
Meanwhile, Lionsgate’s “The Blackening” began its run with $900,000 on Thursday. Tim Story’s R-rated horror comedy, starring Antoinette Robertson, Dewayne Perkins, Sinqua Walls, Grace Byers, X Mayo, Melvin Gregg, Jermaine Fowler, Yvonne Orji, and Jay Pharoah, opens wide today in 1,775 theaters. Projections are pointing toward an over/under $7 million debut weekend, but that Thursday gross suggests that $8-$10 million could be in the works.
And with this Monday being Juneteenth, well, it will be interesting to see the film’s full “four-day holiday” opening weekend. Lionsgate acquired the $5 million flick from MRC following its midnight screening premiere at last year’s Toronto Film Festival.
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