‘Elemental’ Notches Top Disney+ Movie Debut of 2023, Says Streamer
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The slow-burn life of Elemental continues. The film landed the top streaming debut for a movie on Disney+ so far this year, the streaming service announced Monday. That follows Elemental‘s box office journey, which began inauspiciously with a record-worst opening for a Pixar movie, only for the film to have strong legs and ultimately earn $484 million globally.
According to Disney, Elemental had 26.4 million views — or, to put it another way, viewing time equivalent to that many complete showings of the movie — worldwide in its first five days of streaming. Like its competitor Netflix, Disney+ divides total viewing time by a title’s run time. For comparison’s sake, Disney touted last week that the live-action The Little Mermaid landed on the service with 16 million views in its first five days. The recent episode-one debut of the Star Wars series Ahsoka brought in 14 million over five days. The company did not reveal data for Turning Red, but said Elemental boasts the top opening for an animated movie since that film, which debuted directly on Disney+ in March 2022.
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Elemental is from director Peter Sohn and takes place in Elemental City, a place occupied by Fire-, Water-, Earth- and Air-residents. Leah Lewis voice stars as Ember, with Mamoudou Athie voicing Wade. The cast also includes Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Catherine O’Hara, Mason Wertheimer and Joe Pera.
Elemental was a much-needed win for Disney and Pixar, which had a miss with Lightyear last year, and had observers wondering if pandemic-era policies of sending animated titles directly to Disney+ would dampen box office potential.
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