Disney/Pixar
Like the plot of any Pixar movie, the premiere of Elemental had plenty of ups and downs. In fact, between poor reviews out of the film’s Cannes premiere and erratic box office numbers, the underdog story of Elemental could be a Pixar movie in and of itself.
Although Peter Sohn’s tale of when fire met water got off to a slow start, Elemental has become a major success story. The film’s Cannes debut scored a dismal 58 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, making it one of Pixar’s worst ranked films, but the movie now holds a fresh 70 percent. Similarly, after stumbling during its opening with a box office debut of $29.5 million (weak, especially for a $200 million budget), the film spent all summer climbing into the global top 10 of 2023, where it now sits at number nine with a near $500 million haul.
“There’s such a sincere [desire] that you—and of course, any filmmaker, any of the crew that worked on it—just want a film to connect,” Sohn tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed over Zoom. “So much of that crew really believed in the movie. It was disheartening and very emotional for people to discount the movie before even seeing it.”