I think your conclusion is largely, regrettably, accurate. (Regrettable just because the conclusion itself is unfavorable.)Disney's Divinity wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2026 2:21 pm Unfortunately, PIXAR don't really make those calls themselves, they and WDAS both answer to larger Disney. I don't think they really see any of the recent originals from WDAS or PIXAR that have been hit hard since the pandemic/streaming took over as "successful" aside from Encanto. The differences between their performances is negligible.
But something like the false start of this movie poses some questions. "Hoppers" had a better than expected blast-off, which both Pixar and journalists keyed on, around the time that figures like Docter were sort of publicly washing their hands of movies like "Elemental," like Pixar had finally cracked the code and "Hoppers" was going to lead them out of the pits of their mistakes.
And so the fact that their golden boy is actually going to land behind that movie puts them in kind of an awkward position. Like, they counted their chickens before they hatched. But it could also present a lesson.
There have been consistent ceilings to how well their post-pandemic films have performed. So either, they've all been just rotten films. Or, there's some kind of error with the method of delivery that they need to evaluate if they want their films to perform better. And as someone who has generally liked the output of both Pixar and WDAS since Disney+ launched, I have definite opinions about what the answer is.
