With box-office projections putting Lightyear’s in the $70-85 million range, Analysts were off target by a parsec. Jurassic World: Dominion was still in first place at the box office with $58.7M on its second weekend. Lightyear followed not too far behind with only $51.0M on its first weekend. Top Gun: Maverick ended in third place with $44.0M despite being its third weekend in theaters.
If you think that $58,7M is not bad, know that Sonic the Hedgehog 2, a comparable movie, made $72M on its opening. You might say that Sonic wasn’t competing with Jurassic World and Top Gun, fair enough. Then again, Lightyear was targeting a much younger audience than its competitors, so I’m not so sure that it was a factor in the end.
I won’t talk about Chris Evans comments on homophobia and the lesbian kiss. It’s just virtue signaling. I have seen far more critics about Chris Evans replacing Tim Allen as the voice of Buzz Lightyear than comments about the two women kissing. It was blown out of proportion for political reasons, I’m not playing that game.
All in all, if you’re looking for a reason why Lightyear was a flop (yes it was) look no further than Disney itself. Marvel movies are still decent enough, yet not as good as they use to be. But when it comes to Disney+, almost everything that came out in the last few years was either disappointing or bad. The customers have taken note of that, I certainly did. Disney is starting to have a bad reputation, and Pixar payed the price for it.