Similar to the take by Puck’s Matt Belloni, who was surprised by the underperformance:
“What happened with Lightyear? I took the over on the $75 million tracking, and it came in at just $51 million, more in line with lesser Pixar originals and not a Toy Story spinoff. Yikes. I polled a few distribution experts, and nobody thinks the same-sex kiss was a meaningful deterrent (sorry, Ted), but it certainly didn’t help. The bigger problems were a) The movie isn’t thematically connected to Toy Story; b) marketing didn’t properly explain the tricky conceit; and c) Disney’s streaming strategy has devalued Pixar by dumping its past three movies on Disney+. The Quorum’s David Herrin, who does the WIH movie polling chart, has a couple other explanations: 1. We don’t fully understand the post-pandemic box office: We have a pretty good read on superhero and tentpole movies in this era, but it doesn't mean the same will be true for family films. It could be that at this moment there is a $70 million ceiling (like Sonic 2). Three animated films are opening in July. If Minions—likely the strongest of the three—performs in line with Lightyear, then we'll know that the family audience hasn't fully returned to theaters. 2. The reviews weren’t there: Lightyear ranks No. 21 among Pixar films. Those at the bottom of this list are among Pixar's softest performers. 3. The market is becoming more saturated: As I wrote a few weeks ago, big films haven't had much competition. Now they do. Perhaps we need to revise our assumptions. On Sun, 19 Jun 2022 at 1:06 PM 'Bob Jersey' via TVorNotTV < tvornottv@googlegroups.com> wrote: > *Lightyear* trails the Jurassic World movie in B.O., is getting so-so > reviews owing to the non-connection to the earlier films, and is the first > Pixar property to début in theaters since 2020... > > > https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/19/media/lightyear-box-office-pixar-disney/index.html > (link) > > B > >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/1547efd9-b2da-4837-9785-69acbc06a0b1n%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/1547efd9-b2da-4837-9785-69acbc06a0b1n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYLMEKjvBbQEBF78Gotz70yUAHANBYZEhVfqVvEsPGC1gw%40mail.gmail.com.
