Disney is renowned for its animation, but the company has still seen animated movies flop at the box office. Many of the early best Disney animated movies performed well enough at the box office, while the biggest flops came in the company's later years. This is likely due to a myriad of factors, including basic inflation meaning a greater loss. Disney also has more box office flops after the rise of 3D animation, possibly due to an increase in animated blockbusters in general, meaning more competition and higher standards.

Many most underrated Disney movies are generally not the highest earners but still deserve the attention of the Disney fanbase. Unfortunately, Disney Animation is unlikely to take a chance on the same specific subgenre again when it resulted in a huge financial loss, for one reason or another.

15 Home On The Range (2004)

Grossed $145.3 Million Against $110 Million Budget

When discussions surrounding Disney’s animated features come up, there are a handful of movies that tend to be forgotten. That’s easy enough when a studio has 100 years of history. Home on the Range, unfortunately, is one of those movies that is very often forgotten. That’s largely because not many people saw it. The movie, an animated Western centered on a group of dairy cows, did not manage to land an audience, and was one of Disney’s last 2D animated movies. The final one would be released just five years later, The Princess and the Frog.

Domestic and worldwide box office earnings are according to boxofficemojo.com. If a movie's losses were not reported by news outlets, the estimate is based on the general rule that a movie needs to earn 2.5 times its budget to break even.

2004 was, simply put, not a great year for Disney in general. In addition to Home on the Range, the company also had two other box office bombs, though the other two were live-action movies: Hidalgo and The Alamo. Both movies failed to make a splash. So, too, did the Disney animated TV adaptation of Teacher’s Pet for the big screen. Home on the Range ended up forgotten in a sea of Disney box office losses.

14 Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Grossed $5.3 Million Against $6 Million Budget

Today, Sleeping Beauty is regarded as a Disney Princess classic. It, however, was not as beloved upon its release as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Cinderella. In fact, in its initial box office return, according to research from Michael Barrier’s book Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation In Its Golden Age, the movie did not even make its budget back.

In 1959, Sleeping Beauty was the most expensive animated movie Disney had produced. In fact, it was twice as expensive as the animated movies released right before it, like Peter Pan. At the time, Disney was more actively promoting its live-action projects than its animated projects, and some believe that may have contributed to the initial loss at the box office.

The loss presented by Sleeping Beauty contributed to the studio leaning even more into live-action projects over the next few years. Of course, since that original release, Sleeping Beauty has returned to theaters multiple times and has a much larger worldwide gross than that initial box office would suggest. Sleeping Beauty has amassed more than $51 million at the box office over time.

13 Pinocchio (1940)

Grossed $1.4-1.6 Million Against $2.6 Million Budget

Less than $3 million for a budget for one of Disney’s animated movies would be unheard of in the modern world of movie making, but in 1940, that was a huge sum - even higher than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, recognized as Disney’s first animated feature film. When Pinocchio was first released to theaters in 1940, Disney was expecting success at the box office on par with Snow White. That, however, did not happen, and original box office reports vary, making it hard to know what the ticket sales really initially were.

Much like Sleeping Beauty and most of the classic Disney animated features, Pinocchio has been rereleased in theaters multiple times since it initially hit theaters.

Barrier’s book tracking the history of animation, however, does note that Disney recorded a $1 million loss due to the film. World War II likely played a role in the lack of success for the movie, since there was not much of a way to market it outside of the United States when so much of Europe was at war. Much like Sleeping Beauty and most of the classic Disney animated features, Pinocchio has been rereleased in theaters multiple times since it initially hit theaters. It’s gone on to make over $121.8 million at theaters around the world since.

12 The Rescuers Down Under (1990)

Grossed $47.4 Million Against $25 Million Budget

The Rescuers proved to be one of Disney’s most successful releases of the late 1970s. Kids and adults alike loved the idea of a pair of mismatched mice on a big adventure. That’s why a rare (at the time) sequel was greenlit, though it did not release in theaters until 1990. It actually ran behind schedule and animators from Disney-MGM Studios had to be called upon to help finish the animation sequences. It is also, technically, the first Disney-Pixar collaboration, though not in the way movie audiences today would think of Pixar.

The original movie had a budget of under $8 million, so Disney showed a lot of faith in the sequel when they more than tripled the budget for the Australian-set tale. Unfortunately, it did not entirely return on the investment. Of course, the movie releasing on VHS the next year, and then on DVD a decade later, would certainly have helped recoup some of that loss.

11 The Good Dinosaur (2015)

Grossed $332 Million Against $175-200 Million Budget

The Good Dinosaur marked one of the many Disney-Pixar collaborations. Though the official budget was not made public. The Hollywood Reporter estimated that the movie would have cost anywhere from $175 to $200 million to make, right on par with other Pixar movies of the era. It has the unfortunate distinction of being considered Pixar’s first box office failure despite making over $332 million dollars at the box office.

The movie debuted the same year as Inside Out, which might have hurt its chances for a big box office haul. It was the first time two Disney-Pixar movies hit theaters in the same calendar year, and Inside Out was certainly much more successful as audiences were drawn to the unique concept instead. Inside Out ended up making over $850 million at the box office against a similar budget.

10 The Black Cauldron (1985)

Grossed $21.3 Million Against $44 Million Budget

The Black Cauldron is the archetypical "black sheep" of the Disney lineup, too dark and too strange to land with audiences that were accustomed to the most traditional Disney formula at the time. With appreciation for the movie growing with time, some now argue that a Black Cauldron remake could be a great horror movie. However, at the time, The Black Cauldron was a disaster with potentially far-reaching consequences for Disney, not even grossing half its budget.

Disney Animation struggled throughout the 70s and 80s following Walt Disney's death, and The Black Cauldron is considered the movie that almost ended the animation department once and for all (via SlashFilm). Behind-the-scenes problems included animator Don Bluth leaving the company, taking a number of people with him. Luckily, Disney managed to come back at the end of the 80s when The Little Mermaid kicked off the Disney Renaissance.

9 Lightyear (2022)

Grossed $226.4 Million Against $200 Million Budget

Lightyear was not the movie the iconic character deserved, wasting its biggest points of nostalgia and coming to an unsatisfying conclusion. Pete Doctor said regarding Lightyear's failure (via TheWrap):

"I think probably what we’ve ended on in of what went wrong is that we asked too much of the audience. [...] it was just a little too distant, both in concept, and I think in the way that characters were drawn, that they were portrayed. It was much more of a science fiction."

Lightyear is a tonally strange and even grim movie if people come expecting a continuation of Toy Story. For that matter, Lightyear likely also struggled by comparison: Even if one wants to argue that it is a redeemable movie, it is still not as good as the worst Toy Story movie.

Lightyear came out at a strange time as Hollywood slowly tried to revive movie-going culture, but people had become accustomed to watching movies at home, something which is potentially responsible for other box office failures. The movie shouldn't have spent as much time on a convoluted new story. It is not up there with Pixar's biggest box office hits due to a misunderstanding of what would land with audiences in the context of the character's history.

8 Onward (2020)

Grossed $142 Million Against $175 Million Budget

Onward is also not one of Pixar's best movies, but it has a lot of redeeming elements that deserve more love. The setting is tons of fun, the cast is perfect, and the story is a heartrending look at a realistic scenario. Onward explores the different effects of a parent's death on Ian and Barley, when Ian never knew his father, but Barley has some childhood memories of him. Onward wasn't getting fantastic reviews while in theaters, but the central question is how much COVID-19 affected its box office performance.

Onward had the great misfortune of coming out just as lockdown was going into widespread effect, resulting in many movie theaters closing for the foreseeable future. To put it simply, there is no way this didn't hurt the movie. While other Disney and Pixar movies have been huge hits since then, Onward signaled the start of a new era of box office struggles.

7 Wish (2023)

Grossed $225 Million Against $175 Million

Wish was supposed to be the touching centennial celebration for Disney but is universally considered to have fallen short of this goal. Wish's box office flop can be explained in part by the general challenges faced by post-COVID-19 movies when streaming options are hurting Disney animated movies' earning potential. Wish was given a theatrical release on a holiday weekend, which in days past, would have been a guarantee of success when combined with the celebration of Disney's 100th anniversary.

Many people probably just decided to wait until the movie arrived on Disney+. However, Wish's story wasn't doing it any favors either. Most critics agreed that Wish was too reliant on the old Disney formula and offered nothing new, which was probably the point when the movie was supposed to be looking back over 100 years of filmmaking. However, this made for a boring movie in its own right.

6 Mars Needs Moms (2011)

Grossed $39.2 Million Against $150 Million Budget

Emerging as one of the biggest box office bombs of the 2010s, Mars Needs Moms definitely didn't fit the bill of anything close to a typical Disney movie. The whole thing is too creepy and eerie, less in a Nightmare Before Christmas way and more in a true space horror way. Mars Needs Moms' ultimate message is set up from minute one to be force-fed to the audience, showing a boy unappreciative of his mother who is put through a "be careful what you wish for" lesson when she is kidnapped by Martians.

Coraline pulled off this story just two years earlier with a Burton-reminiscent aesthetic. However, Mars Needs Moms doesn't have the same interesting style and is filled with unlikable characters and unappealing animation. The story is basic and the design a mess of other sci-fi properties (and not very good ones), leading to its box office failure and terrible ratings (37% on Rotten Tomatoes).