Lightyear Fails To Beat Jurassic World Dominion at Box Office

Lightyear earned only $51 million at the box office in its opening weekend, failing to beat Jurassic World Dominion, which is in its second weekend.

Lightyear Fails To Beat Jurassic World Dominion at Box Office

Lightyear fails to live up to box office expectations in its opening weekend and earns less than Jurassic World Dominion. Acting as an origin story for Tim Allen’s Buzz Lightyear toy in Toy Story, Lightyear sees Chris Evans voicing the titular role this time around, with the movie chronicling the character’s attempts to return home after becoming marooned on an alien planet. The film, which is directed by Angus MacLane, earned somewhat mixed reviews, at least by Pixar standards, with critics praising the animation and voice performances but criticizing the film’s relatively simplistic story.

Lightyear opened in theaters on June 17th, one week after the release of Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World Dominion. Billed as the “Conclusion of the Jurassic Era” for the franchise, Jurassic World Dominion picks up after the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, depicting a world in which humans co-exist with dinosaurs. The film has earned mostly negative reviews from critics, with criticism levied at the film’s script and the wasted potential of its premise. In addition to Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard’s characters, Jurassic World Dominion sees the return of Jurassic Park legacy characters played by Sam Neil, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum.

Per a new report from Deadline, Lightyear failed to beat Jurassic World Dominion at the box office, even with the latter film being in its second weekend. Lightyear was projected to earn upwards of $70 million in its opening weekend but instead earned only $51 million, behind Jurassic World Dominion‘s $58 million. The reasoning behind Lightyear‘s disappointing opening weekend box office numbers is still unclear, but the report does suggest that Jurassic World Dominion‘s greater large-format availability (IMAX), was at least a partial contributing factor.

Considering Toy Story‘s lasting popularity and presence in popular culture, it’s clear that Disney/Pixar expected Lightyear to perform far better than it did. The film earned an A- CinemaScore, which is an impressive feat, but it matches that of Jurassic World Dominion, despite the latter’s very poor critical reception. It’s possible that Lightyear‘s failure is, at least in part, due to the film’s less-than-stellar word of mouth, which was considered 14% less positive than Toy Story 4. Next weekend, Lightyear is expected to occupy all of the IMAX screens domestically, which will potentially see the film enjoy a less severe second-weekend box office drop.

It’s not entirely clear why Lightyear failed to live up to box office expectations, but perhaps Disney overestimated the general public’s interest in a Toy Story spinoff. In the weeks leading up to its release, there also seemed to be some confusion regarding how the film is actually connected to Toy Story and why the character of Buzz Lightyear isn’t voiced by Tim Allen, perhaps hinting at why some audiences chose Jurassic World Dominion instead, a film that very clearly marketed itself around the return of the original Jurassic Park cast members. While Lightyear will likely still perform adequately by Pixar standards, the film evidently did not go “to infinity and beyond,” like many were expecting.