Despite a rough start with a $29.6 million opening weekend (the lowest ever for a Pixar feature), Elemental is working some alchemy at the global box office. The visually ambitious romance between water guy Wade (voiced by Mamoudou Athie) and fire gal Ember (Leah Lewis) has been steadily hitting high marks since its June 16 debut, staying on the B.O. charts and this weekend hitting a worldwide take of $311.7 million ($125.3M domestic).
This quietly triumphant turnaround places the reported $200M Peter Sohn-directed pic ahead of any other post-COVID release for Pixar or Disney — having already overtaken Disney’s Oscar-winning Encanto ($256.8M worldwide) as well as Pixar’s Toy Story backstory Lightyear ($226.4M). That is, Elemental is currently the most successful Disney/Pixar release since Frozen II. Industry watchers peg the film’s eventual total at $420-$500M worldwide.
Elemental came it at No. 5 on the domestic charts with $8.7M , behind Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Sound of Freedom, Insidious: The Red Door and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was just behind at No. 6 ($6.05M; $368.8M domestic total, $663.5M worldwide).
Other animated titles on the domestic chart include DreamWorks’ Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, which netted an additional $1M in its third week ($14.4M dom., $34.2M ww), while the newly opened anime import Psycho-Pass: Providence scored $210K for Crunchyroll and the year’s animation B.O. champion The Super Mario Bros. Movie continues to nab coins in its bonus level 15th week of release ($70K; $573.9M dom., $1.345B ww).
Get into the Elemental spirit with a recently released clip:
