Lightyear was released last year to mostly positive reviews (it has a respectable 74% on Rotten Tomatoes), but still ended up being far from the critical darling most Pixar movies are.
More importantly, it made only $226 million at the worldwide box office on a $200 million budget. A rare flop for the studio, plenty of pundits have since questioned what went wrong with the movie. The sci-fi tale followed the "real" Buzz Lightyear with Captain America star Chris Evans lending his voice to the Space Ranger in place of Tim Allen.
It was supposed to be the movie that a young Andy watched before getting a Buzz action figure for his birthday, an idea that served as an undeniably clever way to expand the Toy Story franchise beyond, well, toys.
On the surface, it should have been a guaranteed winner, but Deadline (via Toonado.com) has shed some light on how the movie's performance resulted in a rare financial loss for the House of Mouse.
The trade explains that, even with a total of $267 million in revenue from its theatrical and home entertainment releases, Lightyear lost a whopping $106 million. Its expenses totalled $373 million, and a performance like this means the movie is a rare misfire for Pixar. As a result, it now joins the likes of Cars 3 and The Good Dinosaur as a "flop."
What went wrong? It's said that a combination of Allen not returning and the fact moviegoers had grown used to watching Pixar movies at home after the Disney+ debuts of Soul and Turning Red are likely contributing factors.
It's strange too because even though Lightyear received an A- CinemaScore, that was considered a poor result seeing as every other Toy Story movie earned a higher grade.
We can probably forget about seeing any further Toy Story spin-offs in this vein, but a fifth instalment of that franchise is on the way.