Hoppers Box Office Revenue is About to Hit an Important Milestone for Pixar

Pixar can finally breathe a sigh of relief for Hoppers and its box office performance so far. The original movie from the Disney studio launched on March 6 in the United States and had a decent domestic opening weekend of $45 million. But Pixar is known for having substantial production budgets, with its films since 2018 costing somewhere between $150 million and $200 million to make. And since its release, much of the attention has been placed on other animated productions, particularly The Super Mario Galaxy Movie which continues on its path toward the coveted $1 billion mark. Fortunately, despite prior concerns, Hoppers is about to leap past a significant box office milestone.

Hoppers box office performance is great for Pixar originals

As of April 20, Hoppers has earned a total of $367 million, which is very close to the movie’s break-even point of $375 million. This milestone is based on a $150 million budget, as reported by The Los Angeles Times, and using the general rule that a movie needs to make 2.5 times its budget to be profitable.

Thus far, the Pixar film has earned $161 million domestically and $206 million internationally, according to Box Office Mojo. Meanwhile, an April 19 report from BoxOffice Pro notes that Hoppers, in its seventh week in cinemas, earned an additional $2.9 million just in the US and Canada across 2475 theaters. So given that the movie still has about a month before its theatrical run is over, it should be profitable for Disney and Pixar within the next few weeks.

To put these numbers in perspective, Pixar has struggled in the last decade to come out with an original film that has been a clear box office success since 2017’s Coco, which amassed $814 million on a $200 million budget. Some of its struggles had to do with the COVID-19 pandemic, which greatly impacted the theatrical runs for Onward ($141 million total), Soul ($121 million), Luca ($51 million), Turning Red ($21 million), and Lightyear ($226 million). 2025’s Elio, despite it being nominated for an Oscar, was greatly disappointing at the box office, earning only $153 million on a budget in the range of $150 million and $200 million (and possible more).

Shawn Robbins, Fandango’s director of movie analytics, said in Variety that “there’s more a barrier of entry for originals” and that Elio has a poor release window. “Competition from family audiences was difficult to overcome,” he remarked. “It makes you wonder how ‘Elio’ would have performed in the spring, or even a week or two later.”

On top of that, a good number of these recent Pixar movies were released on Disney+, either directly or within a short period of time after their theatrical debut. This has given audiences the expectation that they don’t really need to see Pixar movies in theaters so long as they wait long enough for them to appear on the subscription service.

By comparison, with the exception of Lightyear, Pixar has had much better success with sequels for existing IPs. That includes 2018’s Incredibles 2 ($1.2 billion), 2019’s Toy Story 4 ($1 billion), and 2024’s Inside Out 2 ($1.6 billion). On that front, Toy Story 5 is expected to bring in similarly high box office totals once it releases on June 19, 2026. The movie surprisingly ranks first on Fandango’s most-anticipated summer movies this year over the likes of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, The Devil Wears Prada 2, and the live-action Moana. In fact, the full list shows just how comfortable audiences are with sequels, as the only original IPs on there is The Odyssey (which is based on Homer’s epic poem) and Supergirl (which is not exactly a new figure in the DCU).

Hopefully now that Hoppers is looking like it will turn a profit, Pixar will continue brainstorming new ideas in a tough market for original animated films.