Why ‘Lightyear’ fell short of big box office hopes
“Solo: A Star Wars Story.” “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.” These days, as Hollywood milks its intellectual property for all its worth, many movie franchises have produced that one spin-off that pushed the limits of a connected film universe.
Now “Lightyear “has become that film for Pixar Animation Studios’ “Toy Story” series, which for 27 years has been a boon to the Walt Disney Co.-owned computer animation powerhouse.
“Lightyear,” with Chris Evans voicing the famous space ranger, grossed $51 million in North American ticket sales Friday through Sunday, a disappointing result considering analysts had predicted an opening weekend of about $70 million.
While not a full-blown intergalactic disaster, “Lightyear” is a rare miss for the “Toy Story” series, the first of which revolutionized computer animation, leading to the 3-D style supplanting the more traditional Disney hand-drawn look for good.
“Lightyear” was always* going to be at a disadvantage compared with other “Toy Story” movies. The new flick doesn’t have Woody, Jessie or other favorite characters, and it no longer has Tim
Allen voicing the character of Buzz, who in this movie is an actual sci-fi hero, rather than just a toy.
Spin-offs generally don’t do as well as their main franchise counterparts. For example, “Solo: A Star Wars Story” was a major disappointment for Disney and Lucasfilm when the company tried to peel off the popular Han Solo character for his own origin story.
“‘Toy Story’ defied gravity at the box office during its 27-year run, each episode topping the last, the last two clearing a billion dollars worldwide,” said David A. Gross, head of movie consultancy Franchise Entertainment Research in an email. “But like all spin-offs, the ‘Lightyear’ story is narrower now, Tim Allen’s iconic voice has been replaced, and Woody is gone.”
Marketing “Lightyear” could have been an issue too. The concept of “Lightyear” was a little challenging to explain. It’s led by the character Buzz Lightyear, but not the toy audiences know from the earlier films — it’s the guy the toy is based on, starring in his own adventure. But if audiences think that concept is complicated, they ought to try following a Marvel movie nowadays. At least “Lightyear’s” title is more concise than “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”
The main problem seems to be that the buzz (sorry) for this installment just wasn’t as good it was for the four main “Toy Story” movies. It got a 76 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, which for other studios is fine, but for Pixar, it’s more of a gentleman’s C. The Times’ critic Justin Chang wrote that “though visually grander and more cosmic in scale than the ‘Toy Story’ quadrilogy, its story feels thinner and more generic.”
According to Comscore’s PostTrak audience exit polling data, the movie simply didn’t play as well with audiences as the typical family movie.
As is often the case, dissecting why a movie underperformed is not terribly complicated. Sometimes films just don’t connect the way the studios hope, no matter what familiar faces are in the cockpit.