At Pixar there was a clear displeasure at the decision to release three of his films (‘Soul’, ‘Luca’ and ‘Red’) consecutively on Disney+. That streak was broken with ‘Lightyear’, but this kind of prequel to ‘Toy Story’ was a resounding hit at the box officesomething that they have admitted from the study, also looking for a reason to explain why it did not connect with the public.
“was a little too distant“
Pete Doctor, current COO of Pixar and head of the studio’s jewels such as ‘Up’ or ‘Inside Out (Inside Out)’, has opened up about it in an interview with The Wrap. Of course, he makes it clear that Pixar loves ‘Lightyear’, but he also acknowledges that they were wrong in the way they sold the film and that the public surely expected something different from what they were given:
We’ve thought about it a lot because we all love the movie. We love the characters and the premise. I think probably what has gone wrong for us is that we asked too much of the public.
When they hear Buzz, they say, great, where are Mr Potato, Woody and Rex? And then we drop them into this sci-fi movie and they’re like, “What?” Even if you have read the material in the press, it was a bit too distant, both in the concept, and I think in the way the characters were drawn, that they were portrayed.
It was much more science fiction, and Angus MacLane, to his credit, took it very seriously and genuinely wanted to portray those characters as real characters. But the characters in Toy Story are much broader, and so I think there was a disconnect between what people wanted/expected and what we were giving them.
To put it in numbers, ‘Lightyear’ cost $200 million and then barely raised $226 million. a resounding failurebut not as serious as that of ‘Strange world’ -180 million budget and 73 million income-, Disney’s other great animated bet on science fiction last year, a genre that has given the studio many fiascoes to over the years.
Perhaps the failure of ‘Lightyear’ has been one of the reasons why Disney has chosen to give the green light to ‘Toy Story 5’. It doesn’t matter that a priori there is nothing more to contribute to this universe when it is most likely going to be a huge box office success…
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