Onward’s box office shows the antipathy towards the film

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The last two movies Pixar released broke box office records for animated films, which says something about how unexcited people were for their latest outing, Onward. The movie only netted $40 million of the weekend, which was on the very low end of expectations, which were low for a Pixar movie in the first place. Part of this might be because of COVID-19 fears affecting the box office but none of the other movies running this week seemed to be affected by it. 

This doesn’t mean that Onward is a flop of any kind. It’ pulled in decent money internationally, though with theaters shuttered in China it’s hard to really land a huge box office internationally. It’s also generally well reviewed and audiences seem to like it so the film will push on and return a decent profit for Disney, even if it isn’t as big as Pixar’s other movies. With the Inside Out inspired Soul landing later this year I’d guess that Onward becomes a sidenote in Pixar’s cinematic history like The Good Dinosaur.

The big winner for the weekend was The Invisible Man, which held on incredibly strong for a $15.1 million box office. Universal must be ecstatic that they finally found something to do with their movie monsters, especially something that’s so cheap to produce but so easy to make money off of. We should probably expect a series of one-off horror-focused movie monster films to begin landing from the studio. An actually scary Dracula or Wolfman, bent into social commentary, would be incredibly. 

1. Onward – $40,000,000
2. The Invisible Man – $15,150,000
3. The Way Back – $8,500,000
4. Sonic the Hedgehog – $8,000,000
5. The Call of the Wild – $7,000,000
6. Emma – $5,000,000
7. Bad Boys for Life – $3,050,000
8. Birds of Prey – $2,160,000
9. Impractical Jokers: The Movie – $1,845,000
10. My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising – $1,528,753

Matthew Razak
Matthew Razak is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Flixist. He has worked as a critic for more than a decade, reviewing and talking about movies, TV shows, and videogames. He will talk your ear off about James Bond movies, Doctor Who, Zelda, and Star Trek.