The Good Dinosaur Officially Pixar's Biggest Flop

Looks like it’s confirmed: 2015′s animated adventure ‘The Good Dinosaur’ is the lowest-earning Pixar movie, and the first to actually lose money for parent company Disney.

A new study by The Hollywood Reporter indicates that the film will ‘top out’ at $300 million (approx £210 million) at the global box office. Box Office Mojo currently has it at $268.2 million (approx £188 million).

This leaves the troubled movie dragging behind Pixar’s next lowest earner - which, believe it or not, is the original ‘Toy Story,’ which made $362 million at cinemas worldwide.

However, as ‘The Good Dinosaur’ cost a reported $200 million to make and a further $150 million to market, this is a significant loss.

Naturally, Disney doesn’t have too much to worry about right now given the gargantuan success of ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ ($1.89 billion and counting worldwide) as well as 2015′s earlier monster hits ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ ($1.45 billion) and Pixar’s considerably better received ‘Inside Out’ ($856.1 million).

It seemed immediately obvious to critics and audiences alike that ‘The Good Dinosaur’ somehow lacked that special spark we associate with Pixar movies. While beautifully designed, the tone never felt quite right, and the journey home adventure plot was nothing we hadn’t seen many times before.

Disney and Pixar themselves had long been aware ‘The Good Dinosaur’ was in trouble too, replacing original director Bob Petersen with Peter Sohn midway through production in 2013, and delaying the film’s release by a year.

While it’s by no means the company’s first creative stumble (’A Bug’s Life’ and the ‘Cars’ movies aren’t generally held in the highest regard), its commercial failure - particularly in the wake of its polar opposite, the massively popular and genuinely innovative ‘Inside Out’ - does beg questions about Pixar’s future.

Box office analyst Jeff Bock tells THR, “The Good Dinosaur is Pixar’s first misfire. It’s not a disaster but certainly a lesson learned for the company…

“Pixar’s films are usually the gold standard when it comes to animation, and that’s a difficult perch to attain, and an even tougher place to build your nest indefinitely.

"Pixar will lick their wounds, which are really minor scratches, and rebound this summer with ‘Finding Dory,’ which is one of the handful of films pegged to surpass $1 billion worldwide in 2016.”

Let’s just hope the failure of one original film doesn’t mean Pixar stick too rigidly to their established properties. ‘Toy Story 4,’ ‘Cars 3′ and ‘The Incredibles 2′ are also expected in the years ahead.

Picture Credit: Disney/Pixar

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