Can Monsters at Work Change Pixar's Standing on Disney+?

When it comes to powerhouse movie brands, Disney is unmatched. In addition to its own legacy brand, the studio’s portfolio has expanded over the course of two decades to include Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel, arguably the holy trinity of the box office. But while the studio has successfully parlayed Star Wars and Marvel into blockbuster-status series on Disney+, thus far it’s left Pixar on the back burner, despite a promise to release 15 Disney and Pixar Animation series by late 2023. Clearly Disney+ hopes that new series Monsters at Work will do for Pixar what The Mandalorian and WandaVision have done for Star Wars and Marvel, but the Monsters, Inc. sequel series faces an uphill climb in its quest to change Pixar’s standing on Disney+.

Before diving too deep into the Pixar vs. Marvel vs. Star Wars battle, it’s important to note that Monsters at Work is not actually produced by Pixar Animation Studios. While the animated series is a spinoff of Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. franchise and a direct sequel to the 2001 film, it hails from Disney Television Animation, which has previously produced DuckTales, Gravity Falls, and Big Hero 6: The Series. However, executive producer Bob Gannaway has said that Pixar’s chief creative officer Pete Docter provided the Monsters at Work team with concept art from the film, and director Stephen J. Anderson recently told The DisInsider that Pixar gave notes on the writing and storyboarding in order to “keep them on track as far as the legacy of the project.”

Casual viewers are likely to have a difficult time discerning that Monsters at Work was produced by a different studio than the original film, as the series takes place just one day after Monsters, Inc.’s final moments. Now that the Monsters, Incorporated power plant is harvesting children’s laughter to fuel the city of Monstropolis, new CEO Sulley (voiced by John Goodman) and his partner Mike (Billy Crystal) oversee the transition and hand over their day-to-day responsibilities to a new generation of employees. Leading the charge is Tylor Tuskmon (Ben Feldman), a recent Monsters University grad who’s hired as a mechanic on the Monsters, Inc. Facilities Team (MIFT). Like his idols, Mike and Sulley, Tylor yearns for greater responsibility, and Monsters at Work tracks the eager young monster as he attempts to become an energy-generating Jokester.

Monsters at Work seems like a no-brainer given the popularity of the brand and the enduring legacy of Monsters, Inc., and yet it’s taken nearly four years for the first full-length, Pixar-inspired original to hit the small screen. In that time Disney+ has released two seasons of The Mandalorian and three different Marvel shows, with nearly a dozen more in production, plus a handful of live-action series based on existing IP, unscripted making-of documentaries, and reality competitions. Numbers-wise, Pixar remains Earth-bound while its intra-company rivals leap to Infinity and Beyond.

At this point it's not clear whether Pixar can catch up. Though Disney+ has released several short-form side projects from Pixar over the past 18 months, including Forky Asks a Question and Pixar Popcorn, these titles barely made a sound compared to the thunderous roar of The Mandalorian, WandaVision, or even animated series Star Wars: The Bad Batch. On the film side, while Disney has offered Disney+ subscribers "Premier Access" to tentpole films like Raya and the Last Dragon, Cruella and the upcoming Jungle Cruise at $30 a pop, the Mouse House recently sent two Pixar films, Soul (December 2020) and Luca (June 2021) straight to Disney+ for no additional charge, a move that Matthew Belloni, THR’s former editorial director, reports has been “demoralizing” for Pixar staffers.

Employee strife aside, Soul and Luca were strong performers for Disney+. During the week of Christmas, Soul topped Nielsen’s Top 10 list with 1.66 billion minutes of viewing time over the span of two days, beating perennial streaming heavyweights The Office (1.4 billion minutes), Bridgerton (1.2 billion), and The Mandalorian Season 2 (1 billion). As for Luca, Nielsen has yet to release an official ratings estimate, but Google Trends indicates that Pixar’s fish-boy out of water tale was about half as popular as Soul, which puts it slightly below WandaVision’s final week (924 million minutes) in terms of overall viewership.

But Nielsen’s numbers don’t tell the full story, as Disney+’s weekly release schedule ensures that its shows remain in the zeitgeist for at least eight weeks. Over the course of The Mandalorian Season 2, for example, the show racked up 8.38 billion total minutes of viewership, and if you looked at Twitter during any point in the show’s eight-week run, that figure feels like an underestimate. And while WandaVision may seem like a potential point of comparison for Luca, the Marvel-sitcom mashup was watched for 4.8 billion minutes throughout its nine-episode, eight-week run and is set to be the focal point of Disney+’s Emmys campaign, all but ensuring that Marvel's first Disney+ series will remain in the conversation through September.

Monsters at Work won’t have to overcome the natural limitations of Pixar’s cinematic offerings, but it still faces quite a few hurdles of its own. For starters, there seems to be very little search interest surrounding the new Pixar series. Nevermind the past 12 months; in the past seven days, The Mandalorian and WandaVision have been Googled anywhere from 11 to 33 times more than their animated counterpart. That doesn’t bode well for Monsters at Work, the only show of the three that’s actually debuting this week.

And then there’s the release schedule. It’s no secret that kids love to re-watch their favorite movies and shows, but rather than give in to that habit, Disney+ is dropping Monsters at Work on a weekly basis — and at a time when kids are at camp and away for the summer, no less. Will children get tired of waiting for a new episode (and will parents remember that a new one is in their Disney+ queue), or will they happily re-watch last week’s ad infinitum? Will they even remember to watch when they return home from camp and family vacations?

Pixar has been a cash cow for Disney at the box office, but so far its popularity hasn’t translated to the studio’s streaming service. Could Monsters at Work be the show that changes that? As of now, it seems unlikely, but if Sulley and Mike can convince their company to change its entire operational structure over the course of a few days, anything can happen.

Monsters at Work premieres Wednesday July 7 on Disney+, with new episodes dropping every week.

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.