10 Movies Made For Terrible Reasons
5. Because Cars Merchandise Grossed Over $10 Billion - Cars 2
It's not unfair to say that Cars isn't many people's favourite Pixar movie, but you know who did love it? Young boys, that's who.
While it released to broadly positive reviews and a good-but-not-great $462 million box office - their lowest take since 1998's A Bug's Life - it didn't seem like a second Cars movie would be a major priority for Disney.
And yet, in 2011 Cars 2 was released, leapfrogging long anticipated follow-ups to Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles, despite the general reception to the first Cars being relatively lukewarm.
But there's one prevailing reason that Cars 2 got the speedier greenlight: merchandise.
If you're not a parent it's incredibly easy to miss just how many lunchboxes, toy cars, and general plastic tat the first movie actually sold.
Before Cars 2 had even been released, the first film generated an eye-watering $10 billion in merch revenue. To put that into context, that's more money than the box office of the first sixteen Pixar movies combined.
And so, this proved to be the primary driver for Pixar prioritising Cars 2, which rather appropriately became Pixar's first ever critically Rotten movie, given that it was produced not for artistry's sake but to keep the company printing money.