Things could could get mighty interesting — and messy — at the June 20-22 box office as Pixar’s original animated movie Elio and Sony’s zombie pic 28 Years Later go up against holdover How to Train Your Dragon, which has quickly turned into an all-audience hit for DreamWorks Animation and parent company Universal.
Forecasts are all over the place, but one scenario shows the live-action Dragon staying atop the domestic box office chart with $40 million or more after opening to nearly $200 million globally last weekend. The film, fueled by stellar audience scores, is appealing to both families and hordes of Gen Zers who grew up on the animated franchise.
From Sony, Boyle’s zombie sequel 28 Years Later has all the ingredients of turning into a box office win, considering its relatively modest net production budget of $75 million before marketing. Sony is suggesting an opening in the $28 million range, while tracking shows it coming in at $30 million or more. Others think it could scare up as much as $40 million to $45 million.
The film — the first in a planned trilogy — reunites Boyle with writer Alex Garland 25 years after 28 Days hit theaters and became a cult classic. Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams and Ralph Fiennes star in the pic, which is set nearly three decades after the events of the first film.
28 Years Later
Columbia Pictures
Prerelease tracking suggests that Elio — about a young boy whose wish to travel to outer space and interact with aliens comes true — will open to $30 million plus in North America. That’s on par with Pixar’s original title Elemental, which was raked over the coals when debuting to $29.6 million in June 2023. That was the second-lowest, 3-day debut of all time for Pixar behind the $29.1 million launch of its first very first film, 1995’s Toy Story, not adjusted for inflation. (Toy Story opened over Thanksgiving, and amassed $39 million over the long five-day holiday weekend.)
Elemental found redemption, however, and was soon declared a sleeper hit on its way to earning nearly $500 million globally. Pixar and Disney are confident that Elio will have the same sort of staying power throughout the summer when kids are sprung from school. (So far, Elio is graced with a better critics score on Rotten Tomatoes than Elemental.)
Between the departure of former Pixar chief John Lasseter in 2018 and the lengthy pandemic — during which the previous Disney regime decided to send three of its titles straight to streaming — Pixar has been struggling to find its footing in a world where original animated stories don’t open to the heights they once did (think north of $70 million). But Pixar and parent company Disney remain committed to telling original stories, mixed in with known IP, such as last year’s blockbuster Inside Out 2, the top-grossing pic of 2024 and the top ever title for Pixar with more than $1.69 billion in worldwide ticket sales.
