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Lightyear's Box Office Story Got Even Worse This Weekend
Disney-Pixar's Toy Story spinoff Lightyear continues its box office decline, getting crushed this weekend by the release of Minions: The Rise of Gru.

Lightyear's Box Office Story Got Even Worse This Weekend

After a rough opening and even worse subsequent weekend, Lightyear continues its disappointing decline at the box office. Pixar’s Toy Story spinoff was a tough sell from the onset, branching off from the franchise proper to tell the story of the “real” astronaut Buzz Lightyear, voiced by Chris Evans instead of Tim Allen. Director Angus MacLane’s idea was to create the movie that Andy and his friends saw in Toy Story that attracted them to the toy version of Buzz, a more traditional sci-fi adventure that propped the character up as a stoic hero.

The missing connections to Disney-Pixar’s treasure Toy Story franchise, a much different Buzz, and a poorly-received script ultimately hurt Lightyear. Early box office projections were generous but still poor given the studio’s popularity, but the movie could not even reach them. It failed to supplant Jurassic World Dominion at the top of the box office charts and fell several more spots the following weekend. In its third weekend in theaters, Lightyear faced Minions: The Rise of Gru, which experts predicted would dominate ticket sales.

Numbers for the July 4th weekend available on Box Office Mojo provide even more clarity to Lightyear’s struggling performance. Minions: The Rise of Gru raked in $108,510,000 at the domestic box office in its opening weekend, crushing every other film in contention, including heavy-hitters Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World Dominion. Lightyear, however, slipped down another spot to position six and grossed almost 64% less week-over-week in 455 fewer theaters.

Minions’ success is less surprising; although The Rise of Gru is a sequel to a spinoff, the more contemporary Despicable Me franchise is far more ingrained in pop culture and appeals directly to children. Lightyear, on the other hand, relies on nostalgia to generate interest, and with no Woody or connections to Toy Story, that interest appears to be waning. The most damning result is Pixar’s spinoff falling behind the original horror film The Black Phone, which has found success through word-of-mouth in the tight-knit genre community and positive critical reviews. This placement is likely due to the film’s poor third-week gross, which totals well under $10 million, an unprecedented draw for a mainline Disney-Pixar film.

Overall, Lightyear’s declining performance seems to indicate the fans are not as receptive to dramatically altered spinoffs of characters they know and love. Unlike Minions, which portrayed the same characters audiences already enjoyed in a different situation, Lightyear’s bold restructuring of existing elements hurt its appeal, its Rotten Tomatoes score, and its chances at a sequel. Plus, fans who were not interested enough to see it in theaters are likely waiting for the movie to inevitably release on Disney+, another possible factor in its plummet at the box office.