What should Pixar do?

TwilightZone

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
It's clear that the latest tragectory of Pixar has been...not so good. While there's some golden movies, with high fan reception (Luca, Soul, Inside Out, Coco, and Turning Red) these movies are few and far between. Most of the new Pixar output has been forgettable at best and downright disappointing at worst (Incredibles 2 comes to mind). With the recent failure of Lightyear (now number 5 in the box office on its second week), it brings the question: what should Pixar do to bring itself back up as a studio?
 
Last edited:

TwilightZone

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Some things I have personally found:

A lot of sporadic pitches made during the mid 2010s, before Lasseter got the boot. We can safely exclude his firing out of the equation because of this. We probably haven't even seen the last of them. Pre- Wall-E Pixar made a bunch of pitches together in one room. The seemingly sporadic nature is probably a key.

I decided to look into wikipedia (and double checked the sources)...here's some movies that were in production before Lasseter's controversy making papers in November 2017 and his firing in 2018. Now what levels did he had on each films' creations is unknown, but I am sure he had some degree of overlooking these.

  • Coco (released October 20, 2017)
  • Incredibles 2 (announced during a shareholder meeting in March 2014)
  • Toy Story 4 (announced during an investor's call during 2014. While Lasseter was due to be director, he stepped down due to his multiple positions at the time)
  • Onward (announced July 2017)
  • Soul (began development January 2016)
  • Turning Red (pitched October 31 2017...cutting close to the news story but not too close)
  • Lightyear (started some point after Finding Dory in 2016)
This makes Luca (which has no pre release mentions on wikipedia, other than it being announced in 2020) and possibly Turning Red the only 2 "post-Lasseter Pixar" movies to not possibly involve him.

The most confirmed involvement is TS4, which seems to have had a very rocky development, with Lasseter having to drop his role as director due to too much on his plate (and two screenwriters stepping down). What's left of Lasseter's vision of TS4 (if anything at all) that's left in the released production is unknown.

There's at least 3 movies with rough, long, and rocky developments: Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4, and Good Dinosaur, the latter two being especially rocky. These movies rocky development ended up hurting Pixar rather helping them. The first Toy Story and Ratatouille were the exceptions, not the rule.

The "two movies per year" model seems to be hurting Pixar as well. When it was 1 movie per year, it helped make a new Pixar flick feel like an event. The last movie I can think of that felt like an event was Incredibles 2, but that's because of the sheer length it took between films, a guaranteed return of the director, plus a legacy IP that many fans already adored.

And possibly, two much old guard in Pixar. Turning Red and Luca were both made by first time Pixar directors and both were critical successes. It's something Pixar should note in the future.
 

MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
Before anyone posts that "no one liked" a certain movie because they themself didn't like it, let's look at data....

1656455899522.png


RT Fresh: Is just a thumbs up or down based on critics' ratings. Think of it as a "see it / don't see it" recommendation.

Avg critic: Taking the average score of the critics' ratings from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.

IMDB & RT user Avg: The websites of Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB allow users to input their own ratings. The RT score is more susceptible to 'bombing' because it has a lot less audience scores. The IMDB ratings are usually from hundreds of thousands of users and harder to bomb.

CinemaScore: This is from a company that randomly polls audience members at the theaters on a movie's opening weekend. It is normally a little bit higher than the average audience score because people who go on opening night are generally more predisposed to like a movie they went out of their way to see on opening weekend, especially for genre films. Thus, when a genre film doesn't score well, it's a very bad sign. Sometimes a movie surprises an opening weekend audience by not being what they expected, and it gets low scores, but, over time, still does rate will with a general audience (e.g., Nightmare Before Christmas).

Budget: doesn't include 'hidden' costs like advertising and production company overhead, which is, as a rule of thumb, and extra 50% of the budget.

Gross: The Box Office take. Which is, as a rule of thumb, split between the production company and the theater.

1/2 Gross - 1.5xBudget: The rule of thumb profit of loss... in the theatrical window. Movies move on from the theaters to make more money through PPV, DVD, cable, streaming, merch, etc...

ROI: Rate of investment: A movie cheaply made, but with a $100M profit has a much higher ROI than a movie with a huge budget that 'only' made $100M.

The movies listed as "D+ and theaters" were released directly to D+ in the U.S. and in a few international markets in which theaters were open and that market didn't have D+.
 

MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
About a year and half ago, Nielsen started releasing top ten movies streamed. For as long as these movies made the list, these are the BILLION of minutes watched:
  • Encanto: 20.5 (and still climbing)
  • Turning Red: 7.6
  • Luca: 10
  • Soul: No data
 

erasure fan1

Well-Known Member
A lot of sporadic pitches made during the mid 2010s, before Lasseter got the boot. We can safely exclude his firing out of the equation because of this. We probably haven't even seen the last of them.

While you are correct, we probably haven't seen the last of movies that were pitched to Lasseter. But with him not there, it doesn't matter. Lasseter was not afraid to change a movie when things weren't going right. So without his influence, these projects just don't seem to finish strong.

What can Pixar do? They need another Lasseter is the easy answer. Unfortunately that is easier said than done.
 

Sir_Cliff

Well-Known Member
My only real response to all of this is my personal impression that Pixar had an issue of getting stuck in a sequel rut (1 out of the 10 first Pixar movies was a sequel, while 5 of the next 10 were), but they seem to have pulled out of it and are heading in a positive direction where the balance is tilting back toward newer films. It's all subjective, but I have liked the newer stuff.

As for whether the films are working their way into the culture, hard to know. Anecdotally, I have seen a friend back in Australia post pictures over her son dressing up as Luca for a school costume day. Also had a rather sweet experience a few weeks ago sitting next to an Italian family on a ferry in Crete who were asking their daughter to name what lives in the sea and when she got to "mostro!" and the dad looked quizzical, the mother explained "Luca"!

Very much not of the school that pines after a new let alone the old Lasseter.
 
Last edited:

Disstevefan1

Well-Known Member
I enjoyed recents; Encanto, Luca, Soul (I would have preferred a different ending to Soul) I will watch Lightyear when it comes on Disney+ but I am not going to a theater to see any movie, including Top Gun Maverick, which I am really excited about.

There is no need to panic. Every movie can’t be a blockbuster, there can even be big losers, remember John Carter, I liked that movie BTW, I watched it after it tanked to see what it was all about since the title John Carter meant nothing to me. I think the movie title was a lot of the problem; yea, sure there are folks who knew of John Carter, but I has to Google it. It was a bad title, but I digress…

Pixar, TWDC, and it’s theme parks will be just fine because they are……….. Invincible 😀
 

TP2000

Well-Known Member
I just posted this in the Lightyear thread, but then saw this thread too.

You could also take that viewing minute statistic that @MisterPenguin has above and add in the financial info we have educated guesses on budgets and solid box office data about:
  • Encanto: 20.5 Billion Minutes, Production Budget $150 Million, Box Office $228 Million
  • Turning Red: 7.6 Billion Minutes, Production Budget $175 Million, Box Office $19 Million
  • Luca: 10 Billion Minutes, Production Budget $200 Million, Box Office $49 Million
  • Soul: No Data, Production Budget $150 Million, Box Office $121 Million
  • Lightyear: Not on Disney+, Production Budget $200 Million, Box Office thru 6/27 $91 Million
Using the very conservative assumption that a studio has to get double the production budget in box office revenues to break even (apparently now closer to triple the production budget, but we'll keep it very conservative), Disney/Pixar is in the red on those last five films by about $700 Million so far.

Total Production Budget $875 Million,
Total Box Office Revenue $508 Million

Clearly that's not a sustainable business model. Covid is over, crowds are packing theaters again, and there have been several Billion dollar blockbusters in the last six months. Spiderman last Christmas did just under $2 Billion in box office, Top Gun has just gone over $1 Billion and was still in top place a month after it was released, etc.

Burbank has to stop releasing movies with budgets of over $150 Million to the eight bucks per month Disney+ streaming service. Hindsight is 20/20, but that decision to keep doing that even after Spiderman packed theaters over Christmas was a really bad one. I do think that had something to do with Lightyear flopping so badly; people are just gonna wait until they can see it "for free!" on Disney+.
 

TP2000

Well-Known Member
Later this week I'm headed to the Cinepolis up the road in Del Mar to see Elvis with a gaggle of friends. It's one of those swanky theaters, the only kind I can go to now, where you reserve giant lounge chairs with waitress service and they bring you flutes of chilled champagne and chocolate-drizzled popcorn to your seat.

Tickets were $20.50 per person for Elvis at this theater. But I'll pay the extra money to not put up with a crummy theater experience. Kind of off topic, but I wonder... does the movie studio get a higher take of the ticket sales when it's a $20 ticket at a luxury SoCal theater, versus a $7 ticket at an old drive-thru in an Iowa cornfield? Or does the movie studio get the same cut regardless of what the theater charged each customer to fill a seat?
 

TP2000

Well-Known Member
This might be painful for those CM's or Disney/Pixar employees who post here to be reminded of, as their stock purchase plans and 401K's depend on this, but it's important to remember how badly Disney stock has been battered in the last 12 months. I truly am sorry for their financial loss, as I know how much worry that can cause folks, especially with the price of gas and groceries now. But...

Disney's stock price went from $185 per share last July, now crashing towards $90 per share as we flip the calendar to July again. Ouch! The financial realities like that movie budget vs. box office stats I just posted above clearly are part of this massive crash in stock prices for Disney.

Disney Stock Crash Of '22! .png


This has to be reversed! They have to get paying butts into theater seats for their $200 Million dollar "Family Films!" they release from their flagship Walt Disney and Pixar studio brands. Their current strategy is clearly not working for them, or their shareholders.
 

CaptinEO

Well-Known Member
This might be painful for those CM's or Disney/Pixar employees who post here to be reminded of, as their stock purchase plans and 401K's depend on this, but it's important to remember how badly Disney stock has been battered in the last 12 months. I truly am sorry for their financial loss, as I know how much worry that can cause folks, especially with the price of gas and groceries now. But...

Disney's stock price went from $185 per share last July, now crashing towards $90 per share as we flip the calendar to July again. Ouch! The financial realities like that movie budget vs. box office stats I just posted above clearly are part of this massive crash in stock prices for Disney.

View attachment 649240

This has to be reversed! They have to get paying butts into theater seats for their $200 Million dollar "Family Films!" they release from their flagship Walt Disney and Pixar studio brands. Their current strategy is clearly not working for them, or their shareholders.
Meanwhile Jurassic Park and Top Gun are making insane money. Theaters are back in full force, Disney just isnt making the movies people want to see.

No remake of Little Mermaid will change the fact of how stale the company is.
 

TP2000

Well-Known Member
Meanwhile Jurassic Park and Top Gun are making insane money. Theaters are back in full force, Disney just isnt making the movies people want to see.

No remake of Little Mermaid will change the fact of how stale the company is.

Agreed.

I was at least heartened to see when I bought my tickets at Cinepolis for Elvis that they were pre-selling tickets for the following weekend for the next Thor movie where his girlfriend returns (or whatever that heterosexual plotline is), that it was nearly sold out. 10 days before it opens.

Thank God for Marvel making movies that America's teenage boys and young men want to see with all their buddies, and/or guys can drag their dates to if they promise to go mini-golfing the next weekend, and/or dads and their sons can go see together for a boys night out.

Marvel seems to have mostly remembered who its audience is. Pixar and WDAS, not so much.

HINT TO EMERYVILLE/BURBANK: Your audience is still American parents with school-aged children!
 

MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
Meanwhile Jurassic Park and Top Gun are making insane money. Theaters are back in full force, Disney just isnt making the movies people want to see.

No remake of Little Mermaid will change the fact of how stale the company is.
Those aren't children's animation films.

If you want to compare adventure film to adventure film, Doctor Strange made $950M.
 

TwilightZone

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Jurassic Park may not be a childrens film but youre really underestimating how much children love dinosaurs. There's plenty of jurassic park themed toy sets that I've seen commercials for.
 

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
It's clear that the latest tragectory of Pixar has been...not so good. While there's some golden movies, with high fan reception (Luca, Soul, Inside Out, Coco, and Turning Red) these movies are few and far between. Most of the new Pixar output has been forgettable at best and downright disappointing at worst (Incredibles 2 comes to mind).

There's a strange recency bias that drives these conversations. I only wanted to highlight that you listed 3/4 of their most recent movies as golden. It sounds like you were unhappy with the sequel run they had, but very recent history suggests they are actually shifting away from that. I'd table this until most of the recent movies are stinkers.
 

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
My least favourite trend on the board is the stock price being trotted out. Unless the argument is that shareholders prefer the parks closed and for Disney to no longer release movies in theatres, it's silly to pull correlation for the argument of the day.

Pixar is not causing the US inflationary slow-down.
 

Register on WDWMAGIC. This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.

Back
Top Bottom