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It’s Too Soon to Call Elio Pixar’s Biggest Flop

Last weekend marked Pixar’s worst box-office opening — but with positive buzz and a big holiday coming up, Elio could rocket toward profitability.

The original director, Adrian Molina (the writer and co-director of Pixar’s $814 million-grossing Día de Los Muertos odyssey, Coco), conceived of the movie as a passion project inspired by his own childhood experiences growing up on a military base. Over the course of that creative handover — as evidenced by the tonal shift between Elio ’s existentially yearning teaser and jauntier trailer — the film evolved from what Molina had referred to as a “personal coming-of-age story about youthful alienation” to a more conventionally commercial galactic romp. And if the slow-burn journey of 2023’s Elemental has shown Hollywood anything, it may be too soon to label Elio a flop: Debuting to a spate of disastrous reviews at the Cannes Film Festival and similarly hitting wide release in the summertime, the fire-water rom-com fizzled over its opening weekend with a then-record-low-for-Pixar $29.6 million.

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