22 billion dollars is the lifetime earnings of the Toy Story franchise.

3 billion at the box office.
633 million in TV revenue.
540 million in DVD, VHS and Blu Ray revenue.

Combined, those three things are 18-19% of total revenue.

The vast majority of the actual earnings are merchandise at 17.8 billion dollars for a total 81% of earnings.

This happened over four movies, which each one managed to break the previous films box office total.

- Toy Story 1-363 million
- Toy Story 2-497 million
- Toy Story 3-1.067 billion
- Toy Story 4-1.073 billion

Each one managed to beat the other.

Which after now nearly 30 years, Toy Story is having a theatrically released spin-off film called Lightyear.

Which amusing thing, they actually tried this idea 22 years ago.

In 2000, they did the straight to VHS 2D spin-off called ”Buzz Lightyear of Star Command”, which was effectively a pilot for a series of the same name, which went 62 episodes on the Disney Channel.

Which was actually a common model for Disney at the time.

Tarzan 2
Lilo & Stitch 2
Aladdin 2

All were reduced budget sequels designed for VHS, to attempt creation of pilots for Disney Channel cartoons.

Even more amusing was how the Buzz Lightyear series began as a negotiation between Pixar & Disney.

Disney was the producer/distributor to the Pixar movies at the time, but still not directly owned by Disney until the buyout in 2006 for 7.4 billion.

Disney wanted Toy Story 2 to be a direct to VHS film, but John Lassester, Steve Jobs, Tim Allen & Tom Hanks didn’t want that. They convinced Disney to produce Toy Story 2 and Buzz Lightyear 2000 was a product of Disney wanting a Disney Channel show/VHS movie for Toy Story.

Looking at the new Lightyear movie, I haven’t seen it and really don’t plan to, but watching some leaked clips, talking to friends who saw it in advanced screenings and reading the plot summary on wikipedia, I believe they made a major business mistake.

No aliens

The aliens were introduced in Toy Story 1 and quickly became a staple of the franchise, becoming a top selling toy, a piece of apparel for the franchise and also a major part of the Buzz Lightyear animated series in the early 2000s.

What could have been an extremely connection and way to revive the aliens to sell more merchandise, they opted not to.

To show how that was a mistake, I want to look at the aliens from the Toy Story movies and compare them with the ripoff Universal Studios created, Minions.

Minions were a product of the Despicable Me franchise Universal did and were from day one a very visible ripoff of the Toy Story aliens.

But ripoff or not, Minions made a fortune.

Minions 2015 was one of the most successful animated movies of all time, making 1.1 billion on a budget of 74 million.

A higher profit margin over any Pixar or Disney animated movie ever.

They also sold built an extremely high merchandise business, which has generated 4 billion dollars so far of the 8.7 billion dollars Minions has made since the first Despicable Me in 2010.

For whatever reason, be it Aliens or Minions, people like short, sort of annoying and silly little characters.

The idea Lightyear in an attempt to be more adult friendly ignored this cost itself and Disney as a whole potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue.

Which the movie itself seems to be doing just okay for Pixar standards.

79% on Rotten Tomatoes

That’s actually low for Pixar and by far the lowest in the Toy Story franchise.

80 million projected opening weekend.

Again, Toy Story 4 made 140 million opening weekend.

Ultimately, the Toy Story franchise is designed to sell toys, shirts and tickets.

I’m genuinely amazed Lightyear opted to avoid what are cash cow characters already tied to the canon of the character.

It’s a weird mistake and probably the least Disney thing I’ve ever seen.

Final thoughts though

Lightyear releasing is sort of funny, because about four years ago, I made a list of Pixar movies that’d likely happen one day.

One of which was a theatrically released Buzz Lightyear movie in CGI. Cut to 2022, it’s pretty cool I called that they’d do that.

Going to make a prediction again.

Within the next 5-10 years, there’s a sequel titled “Lightyear 2: Infinity & Beyond”.

Which hopefully when it happens, it has the aliens, because that’s just sitting on easy money.