Streaming Is to Blame for Pixar’s $34 Million-Worthy Scrapped Sequel

Pixar’s history is so abundant with massive animated hits that it’s hard to think about one being a complete failure that doomed the entire spin-off franchise — well, at least one movie like this does hide in the studio’s collection.

Back in 2006, Pixar was having the best time after having released Cars, the first instalment of a future billionaire franchise that gave the studio a promising look into the future with several potentially successful expansions to the original story. However, not everything worked in the way Cars’ creators wished it had.

Despite Being Less Popular, Cars’ Spin-Off Franchise Still Had Hope at Pixar

Having brought the studio $462 million in box office, Cars paved the way for yet another successful franchise, later on expanding the story with Cars 2, which in 2011 earned an even more whopping amount of $562 million dollars.

At around the same time, Cars’ spin-off franchise titled Planes was greenlit, with the first movie coming to the theatres in 2013 and garnering almost $240 million against the relatively modest budget of $50 million. A sequel Planes: Fire and Rescue was quick to follow, though with a lesser success, earning $151 million dollars back in 2014.

Both movies weren’t received with the same critical warm that Cars had had earlier, yet Planes was still Pixar’s new passion project which eventually met quite an abrupt end.

Streaming’s Rising Success Brought Planes Down

Despite the controversial critical response and a solid decline in box office numbers, Pixar was more than reassured that Planes needed the third movie which at some point even got the official release date and was set to premiere on April 12, 2019.

However, at around the same time streaming services entered the game, leading to a major drop of theatrical releases’ and DVDs’ popularity. The sudden shift in the industry eventually forced Pixar to cancel Planes’ third movie which the studio had already spent around $35 million dollars on.