Pixar's 'Hoppers' Opens to $40 Million Weekend, Best for Pixar Original Since 'Coco'

Pixar needed this one badly. After a run of originals that ranged from modestly underwhelming to genuinely painful at the box office — Elemental scraped by on legs alone, and Elio opened to just $20 million last year before quietly fading — the studio's latest original, Hoppers, arrived this weekend and delivered exactly the kind of number that makes Disney executives exhale. A $40 million domestic opening. Best for an original Pixar film since Coco crossed $50 million back in 2017. The streak, at least for now, is broken.

The film is directed by Daniel Chong, the creator of Cartoon Network's We Bare Bears, and it follows nineteen-year-old environmentalist Mabel, who transfers her consciousness into a robotic beaver to infiltrate the animal kingdom and expose ecological threats from a corrupt local mayor. It is, by any measure, a strange premise. Pixar being Pixar, it works. Critics gave it a 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences gave it an A CinemaScore and a perfect five stars on PostTrak. Word of mouth heading into the second weekend looks warm, which in the current theatrical climate matters as much as the opening number.

Why the Opening Number Actually Means Something

Forty million dollars is not a spectacular opening by the standards of Inside Out 2 or Zootopia 2, both sequels to beloved properties that audiences already had a relationship with. But for an original property — a film with no franchise safety net, no built-in character recognition, no guaranteed nostalgia pull — it is genuinely significant. The last time an original Pixar film did comparable business out of the gate was Coco, which opened the same weekend nine years ago and went on to earn $823 million worldwide. That trajectory is what Disney and Pixar are hoping to replicate.

The comparison to Onward is instructive. That 2020 Pixar original opened to $39 million — almost identical to Hoppers — but the pandemic shuttered theaters days later, leaving the film stranded at $61 million domestic and $141 million worldwide against a $200 million budget. Hoppers does not face that particular obstacle. Spring break season is beginning to roll across different US markets through March, there is no meaningful family competition until the Super Mario Galaxy Movie at Easter, and the film's audience demographics skew broad — 52 percent female general audience, strong representation across age groups and ethnic backgrounds. The runway looks real.

The Cast and the Voice That Surprised Everyone

Piper Curda leads the film as Mabel, grounding what could have been a gimmicky premise with enough genuine emotional investment to make the character work. Bobby Moynihan voices King George, the charismatic beaver Mabel befriends once inside the animal world, and the chemistry between the two carries the film through its occasionally aimless second act. Jon Hamm plays Mayor Jerry Generazzo, the smooth-talking villain, and Hamm's ability to make pomposity feel both threatening and ridiculous is well deployed here. Kathy Najimy, Dave Franco, Eduardo Franco, Sam Richardson, and a deep bench of comedic performers round out the ensemble.

Meryl Streep appears in a smaller capacity than the film's marketing might have suggested — a cameo rather than a lead role — but the moment she appears apparently stopped the El Capitan Theater at the Hollywood premiere cold, according to firsthand accounts. For a film that leans heavily into ensemble comedy, having Streep as a punctuation mark works better than burying her in a principal role that might not have fit the film's tone. The score is by Mark Mothersbaugh, his first full Pixar feature, and the film closes with an original song by SZA called Save the Day, released in advance of the film's opening and already finding an audience on streaming platforms.

What the Critics Are Saying

A 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with 144 reviews counted is not a fluke. The critical consensus calls Hoppers one of the funniest entries in the Pixar canon, with reviewers singling out the animation quality, the genuine emotional payoff in the third act, and the environmental message — though a few noted that message gets heavy-handed in places, drawing comparisons to WALL-E's more didactic moments. Variety's chief film critic Owen Gleiberman described it as an out-of-the-box critter comedy with genuine heart. The CinemaScore A and PostTrak five-star rating from general audiences align closely with critical reception, which is not always the case and suggests the film is not merely a critics' darling disconnected from what audiences actually experience.

IMDB user reviews, which tend to catch the more passionate early viewers, are enthusiastic. Several reviewers placed it alongside Soul as the best Pixar original since Coco. A common thread is surprise — audiences going in with cautious expectations after a few underwhelming Pixar originals and coming out genuinely delighted. That kind of conversion from skepticism to enthusiasm is exactly what drives the word-of-mouth cycle that sustained films like The Wild Robot and Sony's GOAT well past their opening weekends.

The Bigger Story: Why Pixar's Original Streak Stalled

The context for understanding why Hoppers matters requires a brief look at where Pixar has been. After Coco, the studio's original films consistently struggled to find theatrical audiences. Onward was pandemic-victimized. Soul went directly to Disney+ at Christmas 2020. Luca and Turning Red also bypassed theaters. By the time Elemental and Elio hit cinemas, audiences had been trained to expect Pixar originals on their television within weeks of release — a habit that took the theatrical urgency away from the moviegoing decision.

A Wall Street Journal profile of Pixar published around the time of Hoppers' release identified part of the problem as internal creative culture. Pete Docter, the studio's chief creative officer, had encouraged younger filmmakers to make autobiographical, emotionally specific films — the approach that produced Inside Out and Soul at the highest level. But that same directive, applied less selectively, generated films that were emotionally earnest but narrower in their commercial appeal than Pixar's golden era output. Hoppers represents a course correction: a film with a genuinely weird, inventive premise that is also broadly entertaining and not primarily about any single filmmaker's personal experience.

Global Outlook and What Comes Next

Globally, Hoppers is tracking toward an $85 to $88 million worldwide opening weekend across 41 markets. The film opened in most major markets this weekend, with China set for March 20 and Australia for March 26, timed around school holidays. International markets have historically been strong for Pixar when the film involves talking animals — Zootopia 2 grossed $1.85 billion worldwide last year, and while Hoppers is not a sequel to an established property, the animal communication premise travels well across cultures and language barriers.

For Disney and Pixar, the question now is whether Hoppers has genuine legs or a one-weekend pop. The absence of family competition through most of March is a structural advantage. Strong word of mouth, particularly in the parent demographic where female audiences over 25 led opening weekend at 29 percent of the audience, suggests people will be recommending it to friends and family in the coming weeks. If the film follows the trajectory of The Wild Robot — modest but solid opening, exceptional hold, long theatrical run — it could finish well above its $150 million production budget domestically alone. That would be a meaningful statement about what Pixar is still capable of when it commits to an original idea and trusts an audience to show up for it.