Is Pixar Running Out of Magic? A Data-Driven Look at 30 Years of Movies

Intro

There are very few studios in Hollywood history that have managed to do what Pixar did. Not just make great animated movies, but create something that genuinely works on two completely different levels at the same time. Kids sitting in the theater are laughing at the jokes and following the adventure. Parents sitting next to them are quietly processing their mortality during the first ten minutes of “Up”, which are causing to cry each time. That is not easy to do, and Pixar did it time after time. Fast forward 20 years later, and Disney announced Toy Story 4 and then 5.

Now look, I understand sequels. I understand franchises. I understand that these movies cost hundreds of millions of dollars and studios need a return on that investment. But “Toy Story” is a different case. “Toy Story 3” was not just a great sequel, it was one of the best films Pixar has ever made. It was perfect!!!.

Andy growing up, letting go of his toys, the incinerator scene that left grown adults genuinely terrified. It said everything it needed to say. And then they made a fourth one, which reopened a story that was already closed. And now a fifth. Even Quentin Tarantino ranted about it once.

Every time a new Pixar sequel gets announced, the internet asks the same question. Why not do something original? And I think that question is actually pointing at something real. Not just frustration, but a feeling that something has shifted at Pixar. That the studio which once bet everything on original ideas, on grief and ambition and love and purpose wrapped inside a children's movie, has started playing it safe.

I have felt this for a while. The movies feel lighter and safer. The emotional gut-punches that defined the best Pixar films are showing up less often. And when a studio starts feeling like it is going through the motions, sequels become the easiest explanation. But feelings are not data. So I decided to find out if any of this is actually true.

Is Pixar making fewer original movies over time? Are the themes getting safer and less emotionally complex? I went through 30 years of Pixar films, from Toy Story in 1995 all the way to Inside Out 2 in 2024, and let the numbers answer those questions.

Data Used

For this analysis I looked at all 28 Pixar theatrical and streaming films released between 1995 and 2024. Every film from “Toy Story” to “Inside Out 2” is included, which means both the classics and the ones that went straight to Disney+ during the streaming era.

For each film, I took basic data like release date, original / non original, rating, box office results and more. Then I’ve added the content of the movies, each film with up to three themes, covering the main emotional and narrative ideas at the core of the story.

To go even deeper on the content side, I also ran sentiment analysis on the dialogue of every film using subtitle files. VADER Python Library, which stands for “Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner”, is a tool that scores each line of dialogue on a scale from very negative to very positive. For every film I calculated the percentage of dialogue lines that scored as positive, neutral, or negative. The logic is that a film willing to go to dark places will have more negative-scoring dialogue, while a film that stays safe will skew positive.

One thing worth noting: three films from the streaming era, “Luca”, “Turning Red”, and “Soul” (One of my favorites), went directly to Disney+ and never had a theatrical run. They are excluded from the box office analysis but included in everything else.

The Analysis

We are seeing more sequels, but not in recent years

The first thing I wanted to establish is whether the shift toward sequels is an actual trend or just a feeling. So I grouped all 28 films into 5-year periods and looked at the ratio of originals to non-originals in each one.

In the first 15 years, Pixar was almost entirely an originals studio. The only exception was “Toy Story 2” in 1999, and even that came in an era defined by “Monsters Inc.”, “Finding Nemo”, and “The Incredibles”. Then the 2010-14 period hits and the ratio flips entirely, but then there is a recovery. We are still seeing sequels, but last 5 years 71% of films are original.

The themes are getting safer

Counting originals versus sequels tells you about the business decisions. But it does not tell you whether the actual stories have changed. “Toy Story 3” is a sequel, but it hits as strong if not more than the original. For the next analysis, I tagged every film with its core themes and split them into two categories: mature themes like grief, fear, ambition, love, and purpose, versus safe themes like family, friendship, adventure, and growing up.

The early Pixar films up to 2009, are showing more risk, taking more mature and dark themes. “Toy Story” is about identity and the fear of being replaced. “Monsters Inc.” is about fear itself. “Finding Nemo” is about a parent's terror of losing a child. “The Incredibles” is about suppressing who you are to fit in. “WALL-E” is about environmental collapse and what it means to be human. “Up” opens with a montage about grief that is still talked about decades later. These are not light topics. They are wrapped in animation and adventure, but the emotional core is genuinely heavy.

Then look at what happens from around 2012 onwards. Family becomes the dominant theme in film after film. “Finding Dory”, “Brave”, “The Good Dinosaur”, “Incredibles 2”, “Onward”. Safe, warm, broadly appealing. The kind of theme that works globally, and is easy to market. By the streaming era the pattern is so consistent it barely needs explaining.

While the themes are safer, the dialogues are still consistent  

Themes are subjective classifications. So I wanted a second, more objective measure of whether the emotional tone has shifted. That is where the sentiment analysis comes in. I ran every line of dialogue from every film (using subtitle files) through VADER and calculated what percentage of each film's dialogue scores as positive, neutral, or negative.

While some films are more positive then others, there isn’t a major shift over time, Pixar movies are keeping a balanced script between positive, neutral and negative lines of dialogue.

The box office tells a story of decline

Content and themes matter, but Hollywood ultimately runs on money. I calculated the ROI for every theatrical Pixar release, using the standard 2.5 times production budget as the breakeven threshold.

The pre-Disney and early post-acquisition films are some of the strongest ROI numbers you will see from Pixar. “Toy Story” returned nearly 5x on a budget of just 30 million dollars.

“Finding Nemo” delivered a 4x return. We can clearly see more red movies, showing under 1x ROI, but this can be from 2 main reasons: Streaming wars and Covid-19. We can also see that “Inside Out 2” a major movie and a more “Classic” Pixar one, provided a 3.4x ROI.

The audience scores are telling something different

Box office can be distorted by streaming competition, Covid, and release timing. So I looked at IMDB scores as an independent measure of how audiences have responded to each film.

As you move through the eras, the red bars start appearing, more and more. “Cars 2” at 6.2 is the first real signal. “Good Dinosaur” at 6.7. “Lightyear” (which I actually loved, but isn’t really a Pixar movie) at 5.8 is the lowest-rated film in Pixar history. The studio that once could not make a film that scored below 8 is now regularly producing films that land in the mid-6s and low 7s.

Sequels never beat the original. Not once, but they are still good.

A common argument for sequels is that if the original was beloved, the sequel has a chance to match or even surpass it. Pixar has made sequels to six of its franchises. I wanted to see whether any of those sequels actually outperformed the film that started everything.

Other then “Toy Story” which is equal (and sequels can be higher if excluding 4), all other movies are showing the regular truth of sequels are less beloved then the original. But, unlike rest of sequels in the big Hollywood machine, Pixar sequels are still performing strong

The Verdict

The data confirms what many Pixar fans have been feeling. More sequels, safer themes, lower ROI, and ratings that no longer consistently hit the highs of the golden era. But the full picture is less alarming than it sounds. The sequel count is actually trending back toward originals in the most recent period, the dialogue has stayed emotionally balanced across 30 years, and the financial dip makes a lot more sense when you factor in Covid and streaming eating into theatrical revenue.

Pixar is not the studio that made “Wall-E” and “Up”. That version of Pixar was a once-in-a-generation creative run and an unfair benchmark for anything. What the data shows is a studio that drifted, noticed, and is finding its way back. Still making good films. Still earning strong audience scores. Still Pixar.