Pixar Is Toast: The Media Reaction to “Hoppers” Proves It

If you have been paying attention to social media this weekend, you’ll notice that there is a full court press under way to promote Hoppers, the mediocre new film from Pixar, as well as an effort to convince you Pixar knows they have a problem and are fixing it. Of course, both of these should not be true at the same time. But never let the media trick you for one moment that the shill system is consistent.

Everywhere you look, from Rotten Tomatoes to X to Instagram, Hoppers is the greatest Pixar thing made since the last Pixar thing. Er, check that, it’s the greatest since Coco. And they’ll do anything to convince you of that. Ninety-plus percent score on Rotten Tomatoes? Check. Previews” box office results that show it’s slightly up from other other original Pixar IP debuts (while hiding that Hoppers was given two days of previews rather than the traditional one)? Check. Shills lighting up their feeds to make sure you know that it’s absolutely incredible and will lift your soul? Check. And annoying, non-trending characters labeled as a suddenly-trending sensation even if the average American doesn’t know their name? Check, check and check.

In recent study shows that Tom Lizard from #Hoppers has the same level of popularity as Mickey Mouse, Stitch, Winnie the Pooh and Olaf

The movie releases on March 6th pic.twitter.com/XMzCJ7ZPuf

— 🦫🧡HOPPERS COUNTDOWN🧡🦫 (@HopperCountdown) February 17, 2026

Pixar CCO Pete Docter on Tom Lizard from #Hoppers.

“I don’t know that you can ever predict these things. As soon as you ⁠try to make something go viral, that’s like certain death. We just thought it was funny. We thought this ​character is quirky and weird.”… pic.twitter.com/F5wB4UThOF

— Boardwalk Times (@BoardwalkTimes) March 7, 2026

Of course, behind the scenes, things are actually not as being presented. In fact, they’re flat out dire.

How bad is it? Let’s take a look.

Hoppers is currently on pace for a $40M box office weekend domestically, including an extra day of previews nobody wants to talk about. That would place it as the definitive second-to-worst Pixar debut adjusted for inflation. Only Elio is worse. With a $150M reported budget and at least $100M in marketing, Hoppers needs to break half-a-billion to break even… and that’s looking tougher and tougher the longer we look at this thing. Remember that Super Mario Bros Galaxy is a likely $1.5B box office money-printing machine and it’s coming April 1st. So Hoppers has three weeks to do whatever it’s going to do.

Now given that post-Lasseter Pixar (remember he was fired for hugging platonically too much) hasn’t had an original IP hit yet and has turned into a sub-par sequel assembly line machine… you would think major corrective measures would be happening yesterday. Right? Right? Well, think again. Because to mess with Pixar right now would be to mess with an ideologically-captured hornets nest for any executive who dared to do so. Getting them just to back off of contentious social issues in kids content is already a huge ask.

Pixar is developing its first musical film with Domee Shi attached to direct.

Shi previously directed ‘Turning Red’ and ‘Elio.’

(via @WSJ) pic.twitter.com/ENZNxe1YlO

— ToonHive (@ToonHive) March 7, 2026

Take a look at that X Post above from ToonHive. Look at it three times if you need. Lest there be any doubt that Pixar is toast, this one is the Mega Toaster 3000. At the same time that Pixar is becoming the Lucasfilm of animation, the solution to the problem is to promote the director of Turning Red (Disney yanked it from major theatrical release because it was so bad) and Elio (I think we mentioned it earlier in this article for some humbling reason)… and give her the directorial debut of Pixar’s very first musical.

Yeah, that’s going to go well.

But don’t worry because Pete Docter, who is not of the right… variety… to lead Pixar in the eyes of its employees (I believe they call him non-diverse these days), has it all figured out. They’re going back to what made Pixar work. Well, at least once they get Turning Red the Musical out the door for the masses who just can’t wait for that again.

Pete Docter is pushing Pixar to re-embrace the universally relatable concepts like talking toys and monsters in the closet that once made it a juggernaut.

“As time’s gone on, I realized my job is to make sure the films appeal to everybody.”

(Source: @WSJ) pic.twitter.com/IWFc4NUr33

— Boardwalk Times (@BoardwalkTimes) March 7, 2026

And this is why, folks, Pixar is toast.

In a scrambling effort to satisfy the ideological capture rapture of the last decade, Disney tossed out a ridiculous amount of talent from Pixar. They did it to their other studios as well. Marvel, Lucasfilm, Disney Animation… they’re all shadows of their former selves. Because it turns out that geniuses are really, really hard to replace. So to make a Lasseter-level masterpiece from Pixar these days, well that’s like asking the 1999 Chicago Bulls to win a championship without Michael Jordan.

Of course, it’s not only Pixar that has this level of decline. All of Hollywood and much of the video game industry did the same kind of nonsense. “Out with the overlords,” right? It’s why World of Warcraft right now is just as toast as Pixar.

Look at what they did to our game.

It’s just like what happened to DnD. We went from epic battles to “slice of life” Disney town. pic.twitter.com/cfW6wstQty

— Grummz (@Grummz) March 5, 2026

It’s a common refrain, but one that makes you wonder how investors allowed all of this to happen. After all, the sober penny pinchers should have kept tight reigns on the corporate money-makers who coddled SoCal values right into irrelevancy. And yet, it happened. Here we are. Pixar, a once great studio, is incapable of doing what it once did. It’s a studio with a legacy it doesn’t deserve. Like a zombie, it has all the appearance of what was once tremendous, but now lumbers forth with PR tricks and social media gimmicks to seem somewhat interesting. It’s just one of many studios gone the way of the dodo in terms of talent.

And unfortunately, it may take a decade for companies to replenish the talent and return to form. We’ll see if AI gives them that long.