Disney Pixar's newest animated film arrived in theatres on March 6th. Onward is directed by Dan Scanlon (
Monsters University) and stars both Tom Holland (
Spider-Man: Far From Home) stars alongside and Chris Pratt (
Avengers: Endgame) as a pair of elvish brothers who embark on a magical quest to resurrect their late father.
The voice cast also includes Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer, Mel Rodriguez, Ali Wong, and Lena Waithe — the latter of whom
serves as the voice of Disney Pixar's very first openly LGBTQ+ character.
On Friday,
Onward earned just $12 million —
more on that here. Experts estimated that the new animated film would go onto earn about $40 million over the course of the coming (now past) weekend. Well, it turns out the estimations were accurate.
Onward has earned $40 million at the domestic box office and $28 million internationally — making a total/worldwide sum of $68 million.
Though it's topped charts; this is certainly not a great start for the Pixar movie. The animation studio usually performs a lot better at the box office. For instance,
Toy Story 4's opening weekend topped $100 million at the domestic box office alone. On the Pixar side of things,
Onward's domestic opening is most comparable to that of
The Good Dinosaur ($39 million).
What's the cause of this? Well, it's most likely due to the Coronavirus outbreak that's been doing the rounds since December. Theatres in a lot of countries are desolate and people likely wouldn't want to risk catching a deadly disease
for the sake of a decently-reviewed animated movie.
Set in a suburban fantasy world, two teenage elf brothers, Ian and Barley Lightfoot, go on a journey to discover if there is still a little magic left out there in order to spend one last day with their father, who died when they were too young to remember him.
Onward is in theatres now!