Buzz Lightyear failure in cinema? “We asked too much of the public,” the Pixar boss judges

With 226 million green tickets collected worldwide, Buzz Lightyear, which hits theaters in June 2022, is one of Pixar’s lowest-grossing productions.

Presented as a spin-off of the famous Toy Story saga – and more precisely as a film discovered by little Andy before the latter asked for a Buzz Lightyear toy for his birthday – the feature film is set in a still tense context for cinema. And its three predecessors were released directly on Disney+.

But Pete Docter, the studio’s boss and co-founder, attributes the cold reception to another reason, as he recently said on the studio’s microphone. transfer.

“We asked ourselves a lot of questions because we all love the movie. We love the characters and the premise.”he confided.

“And (…) which we concluded (…)is that we have probably asked too much of the public. (…) When we say “Buzz” to them, they think, “Okay, where’s Mr. Potato Head, Woody, and Rex?” And then we parachute them into this sci-fi movie (…).

If they were to read the press, it was a bit far, both with the concept and, I think, with the drawing of the characters and their portrayal.”

Without denying the bias of the film, Pete Docter points out the discrepancy between the expectations that the audience might have and what they were able to discover in the cinema:

“It was a lot more sci-fi and Angus MacLane We must admit that he took it seriously and sincerely. He wanted to portray these characters as if they were real. But the Toy Story characters are much more distinctive, so I think there was a disconnect between what people expected and what they gave. “

Buzz Lightyear (the toy) will in any case return in a few years in Toy Story 5, which was recently announced by the Pixar studio.

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