The Pixar Movie You Didn’t Even Know Came Out This Weekend Continues an Astounding Pixar Winning Streak on CinemaScore

In a remarkable achievement, Pixar’s Elio opened with an A grade on CinemaScore, maintaining a record that hasn’t been broken in the legendary animation house’s three-decade history. No Pixar movie has earned a CinemaScore grade below A-, and most of them have received critical acclaim. Some of them have also won Oscars. However, the post-pandemic era hasn’t been entirely prosperous for the studio, with several of its films underperforming at the box office and with critics. Things turned around last year, with Inside Out 2 setting studio records, and, for some months, becoming the highest-grossing animated film in history.

The movie made nearly $1.7 billion at the worldwide box office, and was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Animated Feature category. But Elio can’t be compared to that movie, mainly because it doesn’t belong to a proven franchise. Although Pixar was historically anti-sequel until some years ago, it is now firmly in favor of franchise filmmaking. Some of its biggest recent hits are Toy Story 4, Incredibles 2, and Finding Dory, all of which grossed more than $1 billion worldwide.

Elio‘s A CinemaScore puts it in the same bracket as past Pixar movies such as Inside Out 2, Toy Story, A Bugs Life, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Brave, Monsters University, Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur, Finding Dory, Cars 3, Toy Story 4, and Elemental. It’s the 16th Pixar movie to score an A grade, although it came in under the perfect A+ earned by Incredibles 2, Coco, Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, Up, and The Incredibles. The lowest-rated Pixar movies ever are Cars 2, Onward, and Lightyear, which earned A- grades.

‘Elio’ Opened to Excellent Reviews

Directed by Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, and Adrian Molina, Elio was produced on a reported budget of $150 million. Perhaps because of minimal marketing, the movie is expected to finish third at the domestic box office this weekend, with a projected haul of under $25 million. This is frightfully low for a Pixar film being released in the middle of summer. It holds an 85% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with Collider’s Ross Bonaime writing in his review that the movie has all “the imagination, inventiveness, and emotion that the studio has become well-known for.” You can watch Elio in theaters, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.