Why Disney Finally Released Pixar's 'Soul,' 'Luca' and 'Turning Red' Into Theaters

The Mouse House has some work to do in terms of reacclimating moviegoers to watch Disney toons in theaters instead of just on Disney+

First, Walt Disney Company just announced that Kingdom for the Planet of the Apes would be opening two weeks early, not on Memorial Day weekend but on May 10. This avoids a holiday showdown between the Wes Ball-directed dystopian sequel and Warner Bros. Discovery’s George Miller’s dystopian prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. It also gives the second weekend of the summer season a “big” movie between David Leitch’s Ryan Gosling/Emily Blunt action comedy The Fall Guy on May 3 and John Krasinski’s Ryan Reynolds/Cailey Fleming kid-targeted fantasy If on May 17. Intriguingly, this also means that two of the first three weeks of summer 2024 will be anchored by a star-and-filmmaker-driven, high-concept programmer.

Anyway, this also gives the Planet of the Apes relaunch space between itself and Disney’s big June release, Pixar’s Inside Out 2, on June 16. The animated sequel will be the first new Pixar flick since Elemental (and ironically Pixar’s first straight-up sequel since Toy Story 4 five years prior), although it will technically be the fourth Pixar toon offered up in theatrical release this year. Soul opens theatrically over the MLK weekend, while Turning Red opens on February 9 and Luca debuts on March 22. Why is Disney taking this unusual step of offering up the three “sent to Disney+” Pixar originals in conventional theatrical release long after their streaming debuts? Well…