Pixar’s latest leaves Wall Street on edge

Valerie | 14 Apr 2009, 15:24

Pixar – the Disney owed CGI Animation Company behind feature films such as Toy Story has come under fire from US investors and toy retailers for its latest offering, Up, for not being commercial enough.

The film, due to be the first animated feature ever to open the Cannes film festival this year follows a 78-year-old widower who ties thousands of balloons to his house and sets sail for South America accompanied by a stowaway boy scout. 

As The New York Times explains, the film contains long stretches without dialogue whilst some scenes are in black and white – prompting some commentators to raise concerns about the limited ability to generate licensing revenue.  One Wall Street analyst has downgraded Disney shares, citing a poor outlook for Up as a reason, observing that “we doubt younger boys will be that excited by the main character”.

Pixar’s previous two films, Wall-E and Ratatouille, have been the studio’s two worst performers, delivering sales of $224 million and $216 million respectively, according to Box Office Mojo, a tracking service, highlighting the perceived reduction in merchandising possibilities. Retailers point towards the fact that each of Pixar’s films is getting less toy friendly, from actual toys in Toy Story to Finding Nemo’s fish, from cars and trucks in Cars, to the rodents of Ratatouille, and most recently, Wall-E’s beat-up robot. On this occasion, Disney stores will offer only limited merchandise to promote Up.

Defending his right to create films of creative merit, the co-director of Up, Peter Docter, recently told journalists that the film’s commercial prospects never crossed his mind. “We make these films for ourselves,” he said. “We’re kind of selfish that way.”

The Guardian echoes this point, drawing attention to Disney chief executive, Robert A Iger’s motivations:

“If a great film gives birth to a franchise, we are the first company to leverage such success. A check-the-boxes approach to creativity is more likely to result in blandness and failure.”

Whilst creative and commercial merit are not necessarily mutually exclusive as previous Pixar films have shown, it reflects the growing interdependence of the film industry on a number of other spin off creative sectors such as the toy, music and video game industries. Cars for example was far from a smash hit at the box office but was hugely successful commercially - Thinkway Toys, whose range of products related to Pixar’s 2006 film Cars helped the film to reach a merchandise sales record of $5bn.

Whether Up will follow in the footsteps of its Oscar winning predecessors is unclear but Pixar’s films have to date made over $2.5 billion in box office receipts whilst maintaining their artistic merit.  As the New York Times states: “hasn’t Pixar earned the benefit of the doubt?”