Elio has broken a longstanding Pixar box office record after three decades. The new animated movie, which was directed by Domee Shi, Madeline Sharafian, and Adrian Molina, follows alien-obsessed kid Elio (Yonas Kibreab) being abducted by aliens and befriending the worm-esque Glordon (Remy Edgerly), who helps him defend the intergalactic collective known as the Communiverse when his father Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) attempts to take it over. The Elio cast also includes Zoe Saldaña as Elio’s aunt Olga, Shirley Henderson as liquid supercomputer OOOOO, and Jameela Jamil as Communiverse ambᴀssador Questa.

Per ᴅᴇᴀᴅline, as of Saturday morning, Elio is projected to close out its opening weekend at the domestic box office with a 3-day debut total of just over $22 million. This will place it at No. 3 on the domestic box office chart for the weekend, behind the new release horror movie 28 Years Later at No. 2 and the live-action remake How to Train Your Dragon at No. 1 in its sophomore weekend. While this projected total could fluctuate slightly by the end of Sunday, Elio is set to earn the worst opening weekend in Pixar’s history.

What This Means For Elio

It Continues A Downward Trend For Pixar

Pixar’s previous lowest debut was their first-ever theatrical feature, 1995’s Toy Story ($29.1 million), which came out when they were still an unknown quanтιтy. Every тιтle that they had released since then has exceeded Toy Story‘s debut total, with the next-lowest тιтle before Elio being 2023’s Elemental ($29.6 million). Below, see a breakdown of the 10 lowest opening weekends for the 29 Pixar movies that have been released so far, including Elio:

Even among Pixar’s 10 openings, five тιтles had opening weekends that earned more than double the current projections for the Elio box office debut. While Pixar has had ups and downs periodically, this seems to reflect a general trend of lower opening weekends for much of their contemporary output, even when the totals are not adjusted for inflation. This is reflected by the fact that 2024’s Inside Out 2 (which earned their second-highest debut ever with $154.2 million) is their only domestic release of the 2020s to not have ended up in the Bottom 10.

Our Take On The Elio Box Office Debut

The Movie Still Has A Chance To Succeed

The fact that Elio has had a record-low debut does not necessarily mean that it will be a box office bomb. Elemental, which was the previous lowest debut for Pixar in the 2020s, showed strong audience retention and eventually grew to a worldwide total of $496.4 million. If Elio follows its trajectory, it could potentially climb as high as $370 million worldwide. While its reported budget of $150 million could place its break-even point as high as $375 million, preventing it from breaking even in theaters, its performance on VOD and streaming could make up for that discrepancy.

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Source: ᴅᴇᴀᴅline