Pixar once soared as the studio that could do no wrong. But its latest original film, Elio, has crashed hard—and the timing couldn’t have been worse. Opening just a week after Universal’s live-action How to Train Your Dragon and while Disney’s own Lilo & Stitch remake continued to dominate, Elio found itself lost in a crowded family-film battlefield. 

However, the failure of Elio isn’t simply about competing projects or lukewarm marketing. It signals something deeper—a shift in audience habits shaped by streaming, rising ticket prices, and the shrinking exclusivity of theatrical windows. So today, let’s check out what resulted in Pixar’s sad failure streak continuing with Elio. 

It’s no secret that timing can make or break a movie’s success, and Pixar’s Elio is proof of that. Instead of choosing a quieter period at the box office, Disney released Elio during a time when families already had exciting options to pick from. With How to Train Your Dragon still fresh and Lilo & Stitch continuing its strong run, Disney unnecessarily released Elio during this window. 

Quite obviously, the Pixar animation struggled to catch people’s attention. Even though Elio is an original film, without the weight of a beloved franchise, it seems that every aspect became an additional challenge during its box office run. Considering how families were choosing something familiar, Elio’s lack of franchise weight left it fighting an uphill battle from day one.

Opening just a week after How to Train Your Dragon, Elio came in direct competition for the same target audience. But Mason Thames’ movie was already a hit, earning strong numbers in its second weekend. So while this overlap didn’t affect the Dragon movie, it left the Pixar original starved, leading to a disappointing box office collection of $35M globally, against its $150M budget (via The Numbers). 

This particular box office flop underscored Pixar’s continued struggle to launch original films—after all, the studio hasn’t stumbled with sequels. Previously, when Inside Out 2 hit theaters, it ended its run with $1.69B globally. But then, fast-forward to 2025, when Elio hit theaters, it face-planted with the worst start in Pixar’s 30-year history. 

Originally, Pixar was known to be the home for a few of the most iconic original films like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and such. The studio was literally the gold standard for family entertainment. However, in the past few years, its original films like Soul, Onward, Luca, and even Elemental struggled to fill seats in multiplexes. 

It seems to highlight that Pixar hasn’t successfully launched a new theatrical property since 2017’s Coco. And now that Disney released Elio alongside the Lilo & Stitch remake, this internal competition further ruined the Pixar original’s chances of breaking even at the box office. This led box office analysts speaking with Variety to agree that the release date was a major misstep. 

Shawn Robbins, Fandango’s director of movie analytics, said, 

There’s more of a barrier of entry for original films, but ‘Elio’ is a case of bad timing. Competition from family audiences was difficult to overcome. It makes you wonder how ‘Elio’ would have performed in the spring, or even a week or two later. 

Had Elio opened during a quieter spring window or even a few weeks later, it might have had a better chance to connect with viewers. But guess what? Timing alone didn’t sink Elio, but it certainly sealed its fate. When original films already face challenges in attracting audiences, poor scheduling decisions can be the final blow. But in this case, the Pixar animation suffered further disadvantages that ultimately doomed its fate. 

While Elio indeed suffered from poor timing, the deeper issue goes beyond dates on a calendar. The rise of streaming has completely changed how people think about seeing movies, especially original ones. During the pandemic, Pixar’s titles like Soul and Luca were sent straight to Disney+, which made families habituated to watching fresh stories from the comfort of their homes, without paying ticket prices. 

Now, even as theaters have recovered, this habit has stuck, which led to films like Onward and Lightyear flopping at the box office, despite Disney’s attempt at releasing them in theaters. Now, although it has been years since the pandemic and theaters have seen great success, Elemental and Elio were thus considered a step in the right direction—after all, they both received positive critical reception and audience response. 

Yet, their quality improvement didn’t correspond with ticket sales. Why? Because parents have become aware and trained as to how films like Elio are made available on streaming in just 30 to 45 days. So for them, it’s hard to justify spending money on tickets, snacks, and parking. For them it’s like, why pay for a cinema trip when waiting a few weeks means watching it at home for “free”. 

Shawn Robbins added, 

The streaming strategy may not have created the problem that Pixar is having with original animation, but that possibly expedited it. 

What makes this even harder for original films is that audiences today are pickier about what deserves the big-screen experience. Legacy franchises—like Toy Story, Frozen, or How to Train Your Dragon—still draw crowds because they offer a promise of familiarity and quality. With so many choices and high prices, people don’t want to gamble on something new—they instead prefer watching sequels on the big screen.

Overall, Pixar’s challenge is even bigger because its films cost so much to make. Elio came with a $150M price tag, and Elemental came with a $200M budget—far more than rivals like DreamWorks’ The Wild Robot that cost $80M or Illumination’s Migration that carried a $72M budget. And when original movies don’t deliver massive returns, these huge budgets naturally become a risk and burden for Disney.

Onward	2020	88%	$133 million
Soul	2020	95%	$120 million
Luca	2021	91%	$51 million
Turning Red	2022	95%	$12 million
Elemental	2023	73%	$484 million
Elio	2025	84%	$35 million

So now, with a shortened theatrical window, availability of streaming services, original films like Elio are struggling at the box office. And just like that Pixar’s sad streak keeps continuing year after year, due to how modern audiences consume movies. Therefore, until studios rethink how they release and market original stories in the streaming age, films like Elio will keep getting lost in the shuffle.