Elio makes Pixar history with its box office performance, but certainly not in the way the studio wanted

Elio, the latest offering from Pixar, was released on June 20, 2025. The film is directed by Adrian Molina, Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian. Here is the official synopsis, as per IMDb:

Elio, a space fanatic with an active imagination, finds himself on a cosmic misadventure where he must form new bonds with alien lifeforms, navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions and somehow discover who he is truly meant to be.

The film has made history at the ticket window, but certainly not in the way Pixar would have liked. So, let us explore its box-office results and why it is not historical in the way the studio would want.

Elio is the lowest opening film for Pixar

Elio was released on June 20, and the film is moving towards recording the lowest opening in Pixar's history. Amid this, DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon remains at the top in its second weekend with a collection of $35.7 million. On Friday, Elio minted $9 million, and is expected to gross somewhere between $20 million to $22 million over the weekend. The opening collection was lower than the expected $30 million in the domestic market.

Earlier, Pixar's Elemental ($29.6 million) and the first Toy Story ($29.1 million) are in the list of some of the lowest openings. Elio, of course, has met with a positive critical response, with an 84% rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing.

The story of Elio is written by Julia Cho, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina, and Madeline Sharafian, while the screenplay is by Cho, Mark Hammer, and Mike Jones. Mary Alice Drumm has produced the film. Here is the list of its voice actors:

Yonas Kibreab as Elio Solis
Zoe Saldaña as Olga Solis
Remy Edgerly as Glordon
Brad Garrett as Lord Grigon
Shirley Henderson as OOOOO
Jameela Jamil as Questa
Brendan Hunt as Gunther Melmac
Matthias Schweighöfer as Tegmen
Brandon Moon as Helix
Naomi Watanabe as Auva
Ana de la Reguera as Turais
Anissa Borrego as Mira
Shelby Young as Diplo Ship
Bob Peterson as Universal Users Manual
Kate Mulgrew as Museum Narrator
Tamara Tunie as Colonel Markwell

In an interview with Huffington Post, Madeline Sharafian spoke about the film's look and said,

"Pixar has done two sci-fi movies already and Harley Jessup, our production designer, really wanted to shoot for a version that we’ve never seen. So, he knew that the Communiverse needed to be this sort of beautiful almost Utopia, that there would be aliens from all over the universe gathering there, and almost designed it, one of his very first pieces of production art that I saw that I fell in love with, it was kind of glittering in the sky, almost like a disco ball – the way the lights shimmer on it were like a disco ball."

Madeline added that the film is colorful in tone, which is different from other films in the sci-fi genre, saying:

"So, it’s bright, it’s colourful, it’s also softer and round, which I do think is very different from other sci-fi movies. And everything – even the technology – feels very organic, and kind of squishy and alive, which I think gives it a very unique identity."

We hope that the film's box office collections will improve in the coming days.