Peter Sohn, director of Pixar's Elemental, thinks he knows why the film recovered from a shaky box office start and became a success.

Speaking to Discussing Film, Sohn and the interviewer discussed Elemental's themes of immigration. “When first starting Elemental, I was hoping that there was a universality between two people falling in love from different worlds,” Sohn confessed. “It’s a classic story, the idea of Romeo and Juliet has been around forever. However, trying to do it through the lens of a first-gen, second-gen experience, I thought was new.

“Also, some of these countries that Elemental has done so well in don’t have the same amount of immigrant diversity. The bottom line is that I think the family drama mixed with this love story is what has connected so strongly, ultimately. More so than, you know, ‘Oh, it’s a story about people coming from another country.' Maybe in one location, they take it more like, ‘Oh, it’s someone coming from the country to the city,' versus from an entire other culture. There are lots of different angles that I’m sure people have connected to, but the father-daughter and Ember-Wade triangle is what I hope is the main connection,” he added.

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“More and more people DM and connect through social media about that and I didn't realize when making this film that these themes would be such a powerful thing, but they really are,” the Pixar director said.

Elemental premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to mixed reviews. The film opened to just $29.6 million domestically in June. It ended up legging out to $154 million and nearly $500 million worldwide.