Disney Pixar’s latest animated release Onward isn’t on track for the kind of box office success that many might expect from the powerhouse production company that boasts the Toy Story franchise and critically adored modern classics like Up, Inside Out, and WALL-E on its resume. Onward is not a box office failure, but its estimated $12 million haul on Friday places Onward on track for an estimated $40 million opening weekend. Since Disney acquired Pixar in 2006, only The Good Dinosaur ($39 million) amassed a lower box office take during its first weekend.
Onward features a talented voice cast including Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Octavia Spencer, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. The film takes place in a pastiche world: fantasy elements popularized by The Lord of the Rings are considered historical, though the society has advanced to a modern world rife with technology. The plot follows two elf brothers, Ian and Barley Lightfoot (Holland and Pratt respectively), who find a wizard’s staff and a spell that can bring back their dead father. When they attempt to cast the spell, however, they only bring back their father’s legs, and the elves must go on a quest to complete the spell during the next 24 hours.
It’s a strange story in an odd setting, but the themes of loss and childhood innocence are perfect Pixar fodder – ground that the studio has tread in Inside Out and Coco. However, judging based on early returns, audiences have not flocked to Onward in the same numbers as previous Pixar offerings. Its reviews, originality, and complexity, as well as factors outside the studio’s control, may be the reasons why.
Onward is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes at 86% with an average critical score of 7.1. For any other studio, this would be a cause for celebration, but Pixar’s track record is historically much stronger. The average Rotten Tomatoes score for the studio since the Disney acquisition is 89%, removing Cars 2’s awful 39% critical response, which tanks the average. Among original offerings, Pixar is stronger with an average critical recommendation of 91.5%. Only Brave and The Good Dinosaur have a lower Rotten Tomatoes score than Onward for films that are not part of a Pixar franchise.
Those critics who recommend the film do so in context. The overall impression is that “Onward is a good, but not great Pixar movie.” Many reviews lament Onward’s thin story, describing it as a simple quest narrative with the usual Pixar attempts to tug at the audience’s heartstrings and a few laughs along the way. Medium-level Pixar may be better than most studios’ best, but in order to drive audience engagement, a critical response along the lines of Coco’s 97% might have been necessary.
Pixar has divided its releases among original stories and sequels to existing franchises. Of the sixteen feature-length theatrical releases since the Disney acquisition in 2006, Onward is the ninth film not part of an ongoing franchise. The average opening weekend box office for Pixar’s originals is $60 million, with Inside Out’s $90 million opening inflating the average. If Onward goes on to gross $40 million this weekend, that would be a clear disappointment, representing a 33% drop in the average opening.
However, disappointing opening weekends do not tell the whole story for Pixar originals. While The Good Dinosaur’s $39 million did portend the film’s unfortunate $123 million domestic gross, the lowest in Pixar’s history, Ratatouille and Coco both went on to crack the $200 million mark after $47 and $50 million opening weekends, respectively. Those numbers favorably compare to Onward's first weekend's receipts, and the films have enough in common to serve as reasons to hope for Onward's potential success. It could be that the story of Onward’s box office has yet to be written, as the film looks for strong holds in the coming weeks of its domestic release.
Onward’s word of mouth will be key, but what will audiences say about the film? The story and world of the film do not fit into the bite-sized sentences that many audiences use to describe Pixar’s previous releases. Ratatouille could be sold as a rat who wants to be a chef, and Inside Out posited that emotions are people who live inside your head; even Coco connected to dia de los Muertos, an important holiday in Mexico and for those of Mexican heritage.
Onward refers to franchises, like Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons, that don’t resonate with the youngest viewers, and the creepy concept of the elves’ disembodied father might turn off careful parents who wonder how the film will treat that character. Even the world-building – a world where magic went by the wayside in favor of technology, except Ian and Barley’s father used to use magic, and now they must go on a quest to magically bring back the rest of his body, but only for a day – is too convoluted to fit into a single elevator pitch.
Though Pixar wrings emotional resonance out of the concept, complexity doesn’t promote a film that focuses on kids. That marketplace is complicated by the continued success of other movies in the family film category. It may be easier to sell kids and families on the bright and familiar IP, Sonic the Hedgehog, than Onward.
If Onward hopes the international box office will buoy its receipts, that is unlikely. China’s theaters remain closed, so the world’s largest international movie marketplace is off the table. As COVID-19, or the coronavirus, spreads to the U.S., some families may consider avoiding public theaters. Though the human factor is the most important element of this crisis, studios nonetheless have had to respond, including rescheduling tentpole blockbusters like No Time to Die for a November release and rumors that Mulan may also be rescheduled. The total losses to the film industry as result of this crisis have yet to be fully calculated.
The story of Onward’s box office success or failure hasn’t been written, but from what is known about its opening weekend, Onward is not off to the start that Pixar and Disney would have hoped. While they might aspire to replicate the later-release numbers that Ratatouille and Coco put up after middling openings, there is enough contextual evidence – its esoteric story and the continued coronavirus crisis – to worry that Onward is heading toward the lower end of Pixar’s slate of box office draws.
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