With $66.7M in domestic ticket sales, the weekend was “good, but not Pixar great,” Cowen and Co analyst Doug Creutz says this morning.

Even though the flick will be profitable, “we remain concerned that the creative direction of Pixar may be wobbling as Brave is now the second consecutive flick to receive less-than-rave reviews,” he adds.

Brave’s 74% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes makes it one of just three Pixar releases to fall below 90%.

“While it may have been easy to write-off Cars 2 as a toy marketing campaign gone wrong, the fact that Pixar has released a creatively ‘average’ original flick is of incrementally more concern,” Creutz says.

He estimates that theaters here sold about 8M tickets for Brave, which is comparable to other recent Pixar flicks but is “well below” the levels for films released between 1999-2006.

“Given the price Disney paid for Pixar, and the importance of Pixar as an engine of creative content for the company, we take the risk of erosion of Pixar’s creative greatness very seriously.”Lazard Capital Markets’ Barton Crockett also expected more.

He predicted that Brave would open domestically at $81M, which would have set a record at Pixar for a non-sequel and would have put the flick on a trajectory to generate $260M here.

He notes this morning that the flick “missed our ambitious outlook” and reduced his domestic forecast for the flick to $254M.

He adds that the $20.2M box ...... See Complete Article @ Deadline Hollywood