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The Good Dinosaur: Pixar's first theatrical loss, about $85M on a $175M film
Pixar's 16th film, delayed by a mid-production director change, cost $175–200M and grossed $332M — an $85M loss and the studio's first box-office miss.
Pixar · Disney · 2015-11-25
What happened
The Good Dinosaur, Pixar's 16th theatrical feature, was removed from its original director Bob Peterson in mid-2013 over story problems; Peter Sohn was named to replace him in October 2014, and the release slipped from May 30, 2014, to November 25, 2015. The production budget landed at about $175–200 million.
It opened in the United States to $56 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend, second behind The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, then faded to $332 million worldwide — by far the weakest showing of any Pixar release at that point.
The Hollywood Reporter put the all-in cost at about $350 million including marketing and estimated the studio's share of the box office fell far short of it, producing a reported loss of about $85 million. It was Pixar's first film to lose money in its theatrical run, published the same year as the studio's Inside Out and parent Disney's Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which absorbed the hit.
Why it happened
- A mid-production director change on story grounds delayed the film more than a year, so the budget and schedule drifted while the story was still being rebuilt.
- The film carried a $175–200M budget into a market where its own studio's reputation was the draw — but the retooled, rushed story did not land, and audiences stayed away in record numbers for Pixar.
- Disney released it as a holiday event film; the $332M gross left the studio's return far below the ~$350M all-in cost, so even home video and TV sales could not close the gap.
The lesson
A studio's name is not an audience: Pixar rushed a $175M film through a director change and released it as if the brand would carry it — the story itself still has to be the product.
Sources
- Wikipedia — The Good Dinosaur
- The Hollywood Reporter — 'Good Dinosaur': Analyzing Pixar's First Box-Office Disaster
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