Pixar chief creative officer explains why ‘Lightyear’ failed and teases an ‘amazing’ ‘Toy Story 5’

After being relegated to Disney+, first due to the pandemic and then…because we had to keep feeding the streaming beast, Pixar returns to the big screen in the summer of 2022 with ‘Lightyear’. A very ambitious bet because it was a spin-off of one of the protagonists of his most successful franchise, ‘Toy Story’, with Chris Evans voicing Buz Lightyear. On paper, it sounded like the smash hit that would fill Goosenecks and Mickey Mouse coffers.

However, the result fell far short of expectations. Critics weren’t particularly enthusiastic about the Angus Cloud film, and audiences failed to enter a proposal whose initial idea (the film about the character, not the toy) was not fully understood. ‘Lightyear’ ended its theatrical run with $218.77 million worldwide, giving losses due to its bulky budget (about 200 million dollars). It is the studio’s lowest-grossing film, just above ‘Onward’, which was released just days before the confinement began.

Pete Docter, chief creative officer at Pixar, reflected in an interview with The Wrap on what went wrong in a premiere that seemed destined to go on forever and beyond: “We thought about it a lot because we love the movie. We love the characters and the premise. I think probably the conclusion we’ve come to about what went wrong is that we asked too much of the audience.. When they hear Buzz they think ‘great, where are Mr. Potato, Woody and Rex?’, and then we put them in this sci-fi movie and they’re like ‘what?’ Even though they had read the reports in the press, it was a bit too distant, both in concept and in the way the characters were drawn and portrayed. It was too much science fiction. And Angus, to his credit, took that very seriously and wanted to portray those characters as real characters. But the characters in ‘Toy Story’ are broader, and I think there was a disconnect between what people wanted or expected and what we gave them.”.

‘Toy Story 5’, ‘Elio’ and ‘Inside Out 2’

After the stings of “Lightyear” and “Strange World,” Disney broke the emergency glass and announced new installments of its most successful animated films. In addition to a second part of ‘Zootopia’, they will also bring back ‘Frozen’ and ‘Toy Story’. Speaking of the toy movie’s fifth installment, Pete Docter prefers not to give many details just yet, but teases that he thinks it will be “Amazing” and guarantees: “It’s got some really cool stuff you’ve never seen before”.

‘Toy Story 5’ is still a long way off (it doesn’t even have a release date), but Pixar are very busy with various projects. On the big screen, his next appointment will be ‘Elemental’, in theaters on June 16th. Next year they will premiere ‘Elio’, directed by Adrian Molina, about a boy whom some aliens confuse with the ambassador of the Earth. “It’s a very special film. We saw the version two days ago…let me think, what was…number eight. They’re coming to an end, they have the last touches left. It’s coming out next year, but it’s really brilliant. I think people are going to love it.”.

Also at the last D23 Expo they announced the sequel to ‘Inside Out’, which will have Kelsey Mann at the controls. It was he who came up with the idea to bring Joy and Riley’s emotions back to life. On this idea Docter comments: “It was really moving and heartfelt, very personal to him, but also universal, dealing with… well, I don’t want to reveal the movie, but it has a lot of heart, a soul that is key to the arrival of many of the new emotions that will appear. Everything is connected”. When they were preparing the first ‘Inside Out’, they thought of up to 27 emotions, so they have a choice in the sequel.