Disney and Pixar’s Lightyear didn’t make quite the landing at the box office as initially projected, grossing just $156 million worldwide, to date, on its $200 million budget. There are likely a number of reasonable explanations for the underperformance, such as competition from Hollywood blockbusters Jurassic World Dominion and Top Gun: Maverick — not to mention that spinoffs rarely do as well as the franchises they’re based on.
But Tim Allen, who voiced Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story movies, has other ideas about what went wrong.
Speaking with Extra alongside his Home Improvement co-star Richard Karn about their new History channel series, More Power!, Allen says that the problem is that the spinoff deviated too far from the source material. And it definitely doesn’t have to do anything with the fact that Allen himself wasn’t asked to voice the titular role.
“Literally, the short answer is that I’ve stayed out of this because it has nothing to do [with me],” Allen told Extra host Jenn Lahmers. “As I’ve said a long time ago, we talked about this many years ago; it came up in one of the sessions; I said, ‘What a fun movie that would be.'”
“And we spoke about it, but the brass that did the first four movies is not this — this is a whole new team that really have nothing to do with the first movies,” the 69-year-old explained. “I thought it was a live-action, when they said they were doing a live-action… you know, real humans, not an animated thing.”
However, Allen also took issue with the fact that Tom Hanks and the character of Woody are absent from the film — which quite honestly is probably for the best? You can maybe explain a cat in space — after all, it’s not like that’s an entirely new concept — but a cowboy might be a harder sell.
“And really, Hanks and I, well, there’s really no Toy Story Buzz without Woody, so I’m not sure what the idea [was,” Allen continued. “I’m a plot guy, and this was done in 1997; it would seem to be a big adventure story, as I see, it’s not a big adventure story, it’s a wonderful story, it just doesn’t seem to have any connection to the toy. It has no relationship to Buzz. It just seems like there’s no connection; I wish there was a better connection to it.”
Lightyear still had a pretty decent critical reception, despite the poor box office turnout, so perhaps the film will have a better shot on streaming. Though there’s no official streaming date yet, Disney typically releases films to Disney Plus after about 30 to 45 days of theatrical exclusivity, so we can probably expect to see Lightyear sometime between mid-July to early August.