Name another movie in history that started to less than 30 million and went on to make $600 million?
I understand your point. And Elemental is going to be a huge box office disappointment for TWDC and Pixar.
But, there are movies that start small and end up with enormously successful box office numbers. Lost In Translation made less than $1,000,000 its opening salvo and made over $44,000,000 domestically. My Big Fat Greek Wedding opened to less than $1,000,000 its opening weekend and made over $240,000,000 domestically. Big-budget or low-budget films can start small and gain traction. It happens, but to your point, its the exception not the rule.
in a better time-slot/environment it might have done better.
This too may be true. But, I see this situation much differently. TWDC and its movie divisions, across the board, have a massive problem.
First, LucasFilm is such a total disaster that it cannot even get Star Wars projects green lit and shot and are dumping ideas/stories (e.g. Taika's project, Jenkins' project, Rian's projects, etc.) with so much frequency I do not believe any thing Kathleen Kennedy says now. It's all blue-sky nonsense. Frankly, I am deeply concerned with the upcoming Indy movie. I hope its great. That's all I have though: hope.
Second, Marvel is a mess. The recent box office figures are not gangbusters. Some of this is within Kevin Feige's control (i.e. hiring Jeff Loveness to pen a major movie or green-lighting the Eternals) and some is out of his control (i.e. Chadwick Boseman's death or Jonathan Majors' legal troubles). As an aside, the upcoming Marvels teaser looked so bad, when I saw it, I commented to my son that looks like one of the worst movies of the year (not just comic-book genre either).
Third, Pixar has embraced this existentialism form of story telling recently (i.e. Soul, Onward, Elemental, etc.) and it isn't producing good movies. This form of story telling can result in good movies, like Fight Club, 2001 or Everything Everywhere All At Once. Good luck trying explaining this esoteric, caviar stuff to a small child.
Plus, like it or not, Republicans and conservatives buy movie tickets too. And if there is a group that decides to spend their money elsewhere (e.g. Illumination movies), then they do and TWDC loses at the box office. And if Republicans and conservative parents feel alienated, then they won't spend their money with TWDC and TWDC needs to accept this reality.
Fourth, Walt Disney Studios isn't doing super well both live-action and animation departments. Not only was Strange World a massive flop last year, the truth is that The Little Mermaid may not even break even. I have no idea why TWDC spent $250M on a movie and then spent another $100M to market a movie with no A-list talent cast as the two leads, Ariel or Eric. The budgeted money is obscene to start with and then you try to make a movie where the audience is saying to itself who are these actors. I get that actors need a break to make it big. Perhaps a lower budget movie is the right place to start rather than a $250M budget? It reminds me of 20th Century Fox handing Simon Kinberg the reigns to an X-Men movie and he had never directed a movie before. Simon may turn out to be a talented director. But how about letting him start on a smaller project with a lower budget and cut his teeth there rather than a massive budget blockbuster movie? Even Steven Spielberg, an all time great, started with a small TV movie, Duel.
I'm still a fan of Disney movies and parks and I can embrace the reality that TWDC is making poor decisions and its going to result in big losses.