‘Lightyear’ Earns Soft $5.2 Million Thursday

Disney and Pixar’s Lightyear earned $5.2 million in Thursday previews. The Chris Evans-starring sci-fi action comedy is Pixar’s first full-throated theatrical release since Onward in early 2020, which underwhelmed just before Covid shut everything down. Since then, three excellent, inclusive and/or original Pixar flicks have gone straight to Disney+, with Bob Chapek using Pixar’s A+ reputation as a carrot for those not already on board or not interested in Star Wars and Marvel. So, there is a cruel irony in Lightyear, which is a cynical IP exploitation that’s technically unoriginal and stars a white guy, not just being the first Pixar flick of the Covid era to get a theatrical release but also being tasked with “proving” the viability of Pixar films in theaters for a CEO who would prefer they all go to Disney+.

Imagine that Solo: A Star Wars Story was responsible not just for itself but for all future Star Wars or Lucasfilm flicks getting theatrical releases, and you get the general idea. If Lightyear opens with closer to $70 million than $100 million this weekend, it’s worth noting that this is essentially Pixar’s Solo. An underwhelming theatrical performance could be more about general disinterest in Buzz Lightyear getting his own disconnected spin-off origin/prequel movie (with a different actor playing the role no less) than any macro-judgments concerning Pixar’s theatrical value and/or online-only controversies about Tim Allen being replaced and the film’s early same-sex kiss scene between two elderly married women. Will general moviegoers make decisions based on that stuff? Maybe, but if their kids want to see Lightyear in a theater their parents will take them.

Or, even simpler, maybe Lightyear, which is being sold as “the movie Andy saw as a kid that made him a fan of Buzz Lightyear,” is going to play more like a Pixar original than Toy Story 5. Inflation notwithstanding, most Pixar originals from 2002 (Monsters Inc.) to 2012 (Brave) opened with between $62 million and $72 million. Sure, sometimes Ratatouille opened to $48 million (and legged out to $209 million) or Inside Out opened (in 2015) with $90 million and legged out to $356 million, but their $100 million-plus openers (Toy Story 3, Finding Dory, Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4) are all sequels. All this doom-and-gloom is based on Lightyear playing more like a big-deal Pixar event in terms of Thursday-to-weekend frontloading and thus “only” earning 10x that Thursday figure over the weekend.

Incredibles 2 earned $18.5 million toward a $183 million debut while Toy Story 4 earned $12 million on Thursday for a $120 million weekend. A similar pattern would give Lightyear a $52 million debut, which would be below even most non-event Pixar “originals.” Conversely, Minions earned $6.2 million on Thursday in July 2015 toward a $115 million debut, and Finding Dory earned $9 million toward a $135 million launch in June 2016. If Lightyear opens with between $78 million and $96 million, then that’s still good-to-great for a film that really isn’t Toy Story 5. However, the merely “it’s good” reviews won’t convert any otherwise disinclined moviegoers, especially with Jurassic World 3 and Top Gun 2 running wild. Just because everyone showed up to The Force Awakens doesn’t mean they wanted to see Solo.

That said, it’s the first big animated film since DreamWorks’ The Bad Guys (give or take Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2), and I can’t imagine halfway decent legs by virtue of little competition. Minions: The Rise of Gru opens on July 1, but in pre-Covid times Pixar blockbusters (Toy Story 3, Monsters University, Inside Out, Finding Dory, etc.) and Ilumination blockbusters (Despicable Me, Despicable Me 2, Minions, The Secret Life of Pets, etc.) thrived concurrently. Otherwise, unless Paramount’s Paws of Fury (whose trailer actively repelled my kids during a Dominion matinee) breaks out on July 15, and with Puss in Boots 2 moving to December and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse part I moving to next summer, Minions 2 and Lightyear are it for big animation until, uh, Disney’s Strange Worlds over Thanksgiving.