This past weekend, Elio finally was released by Disney and Pixar. You are forgiven if you didn’t realize it was coming out. To say that Disney and or Pixar did so little to promote this film is an understatement. Originally, this was supposed to come out last June. In 2023, there were trailers for it. Then, it came out that it was going to be moved until the this year. That delay of a year has been reportedly to redo the movie. You can kind of see what was changed if you watch the original trailer from two years ago, then watch the trailer that we have now, or god forbid, you watch the actual movie. The puzzling thing about this movie was Disney’s lack of a marketing push that they usually roll out for their films. Right now, I am so, so tired of trailers for The Bad Guys 2 and Smurfs. The trailer I have not seen very much is Elio. The most galling is it wasn’t attached to Snow White when I went to see that one. You could choose to view all of that as Iger just wanted it to be over with, and just threw it out to the masses.

As I will highlight below, the second weekend of June has traditionally been Pixar’s release weekend. However, with How to Train Your Dragon opening the weekend before, Elio never had a chance. What would the landscape have looked like if you delay it at least one week more? You give HtTYD a second week to burn off its audience, and you place Elio in a weekend where it still will have no competition in the family market. M3gan and F1 are grown up films that are not going to hurt Elio, so it possibly would have had a better showing. All of that though is assuming there is an appropriate marketing push for it, which Elio just didn’t seem to have. That meant it was DOA when it arrived this past weekend and had the worst opening weekend ever for a Disney-Pixar film. Let’s now take a look at the future.

Here is what is upcoming for Pixar:

• Hoppers (March 6, 2026)
• Toy Story 5 (June 19, 2026)
• Gatto (June 18, 2027)
• Incredibles 3 (TBA)
• Coco 2 (TBA)

That is 3 sequels and 2 originals on the schedule. Before people start whining about all the sequels, there is something they need to hear. The reason we are getting Toy Story 5 and Coco 2 is because nobody goes to see Soul, Elemental, or Turning Red. They don’t go because they don’t know anything about them. Here is the thing though: we didn’t know anything about Monsters Inc, Up, or Wall-E either. You watch the movie to learn about them. People just don’t want to anymore, and only want movies they are familiar with.

Where does that leave us with Hoppers next March? Unfortunately, it opens a week after WB’s animated The Cat in the Hat movie. It was opening the same day as Hoppers, but WB moved it up a week. As for Hoppers landscape when it is released, it has 4 weeks to make as much money as it can before Super Mario Bros 2 is released Easter weekend. March 6 is 256 days from when from when this post goes up, and we have nothing for it yet, other than the Director and 3 people in the cast (Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan, and Jon Hamm). We don’t even have a teaser trailer for it yet. You don’t need anything for it either. Just a logo, date, and maybe a character or two. The purpose is letting people know it is coming. That is something they barely did for Elio, and that is part of the reason it did so badly in its first weekend. Toy Story 5 not having a teaser is also not great, but that one will sell itself. At worst we should see a trailer for Hoppers attached to Zootopia 2. We should also see a TS5 teaser then too in a perfect world. Maybe we see one attached to Freakier Friday in August. If there is one thing that should be taken away from this Elio debacle is the marketing for Hoppers has to be a lot more aggressive, or all of this will happen again. If it does, get ready for nothing but diminishing sequels.