The animation featuring the Toy Story character didn’t do too well at the box office.
Lightyear hit theaters last June, and for a film with so much potential to evoke nostalgia for Toy Story fans which had its late sequel in 2019 the result wasn’t that satisfying numerically. The feature film cost $200 million to produce and grossed “only” $26.4 million over budget.
That’s a lot in the average person’s bank account, but when you think about the box office and audience ratings, the production didn’t do that well. Even more so because it’s a longawaited blockbuster from Pixar, one of the biggest animation studios in cinema. The company’s creative director is also aware of this and wonders why the film was not so well received.
In a recent interview with The Wrap, creative director Pete Docter explained that the low performance of light year at the box office is due to the impression the audience had before the launch, even if the promotional materials revealed a different perspective. For him, the fans of toy story expected to be gripped by nostalgia, while director Angus MacLane offered a more futuristic proposal. “We ask a lot of the public.”
When they hear hum [Lightyear], they say, “Great! Where is Mr. Potato Head, Woody and Rex?’ And then we put them in a scifi movie and they’re like, ‘What?’ Although they read the material in the press, it was a little farfetched, both in concept and in the way the characters were drawn and portrayed.
However, Docter believes that director MacLane delivered exactly what Pixar intended. “Angus took it very seriously and genuinely and wanted to portray these characters as real characters. But Toy Story’s are much broader, so I think there was a disconnect between what people wanted/expected and what we gave them.”
In the recently released film, Buzz Lightyear is abandoned along with his commander and the other members of the team on a hostile planet far from Earth. Trying to find his way back home, the astronaut faces challenges dealing with Zurg, an imposing being surrounded by an army of robots who arrive on the planet with a mysterious destination that doesn’t look good.
Chris Evans is the voice actor for Buzz, while Marcos Mion provided the Brazilian voice. The original cast also includes Keke Palmer, Peter Sohn, Taika Waititi, Dale Soules, James Brolin, Uzo Aduba and Isiah Whitlock Jr.