20 Recent Box Office Flops Everyone Saw Coming

There's no denying that the once-bulletproof Pixar has struggled massively at the box office since the pandemic, when animated films were often sent direct to streaming, and families became conditioned to wait, save money, and watch them at home.

Last year, Inside Out 2 did at least prove the enduring viability of Pixar's tried-and-true franchises, given that it grossed an eye-watering $1.699 billion worldwide, making it the highest-grossing Hollywood animation of all time. But that didn't exactly suggest smooth sailing for the studio's original IP, and so there was a lot of skepticism that their new film, Elio, could go the distance.

With a budget estimated to be between $150-200 million, that left Elio needing to gross at least $375 million to be deemed a success, but it ended up topping out at just $154 million. This made it the lowest-grossing non-pandemic Pixar film by a huge margin and was basically the very predictable result of numerous adverse circumstances conspiring against it.

For one, the marketing didn't do much to sell the uniqueness of Elio's concept or characters - it simply looked like a bog-standard, lower-tier Pixar film one could easily skip and catch on Disney+ in a few months' time.

Reviews were just fine, and additionally, attention was stolen away by the far more successful live-action remakes of Lilo and Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, not to mention KPop Demon Hunters, which released on Netflix the very same day that Elio hit cinemas.

With Elio's failure and the general struggle for original Pixar movies to hit commercially, it's little surprise that within the next few years we're going to get Toy Story 5, Incredibles 3, and Coco 2.