Inside Out 2 is proving to be the huge box office hit Pixar’s needed, with it on-track to be one of the biggest animated openings ever.
Pixar’s Inside Out 2 is shaping up to be one of the year’s big success stories at the box office, with Deadline reporting that the sequel is posting huge early numbers. It’s currently on track for a $140 million weekend, which would make it the third biggest animated movie opening of all time, behind The Incredibles 2 (which opened with $182 million) and last year’s The Super Mario Bros Movie (which opened with $146 million). Heck, if the box office really heats up today and tomorrow, Inside Out 2 could even potentially outgross Super Mario, although the general vibe seems to be that it will fall just a bit short.
Whatever the case, this is quite the coup, not only for the struggling summer box office but also for Pixar, which has suffered from a series of catastrophic flops since the pandemic. For a while, it looked like the studio had lost its magic, but audiences are flocking to Inside Out 2, which is making about $50 million more than the original on its opening weekend in 2015. It also VASTLY outperformed industry estimates (as well as our own), which is good news because exhibitors surely needed a hit. In between this and Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the box office is on an upswing, and hopefully, movies like A Quiet Place: Day One, Despicable Me 4 and Deadpool and Wolverine can help keep those numbers up.
Meanwhile, Bad Boys: Ride or Die is showing good staying power, with it likely only dipping about 50% in week two, with an estimated $28 million weekend. Notably, it looks like Disney’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is going to leapfrog over The Garfield Movie and IF to take third place, with a $4.45 million weekend. Both family-oriented movies lost their family audience to Inside Out 2.
What do you make of Inside Out 2’s incredible gross? Does it help that Disney’s apparently pledged to keep this movie off Disney Plus for at least three months? Let us know in the comments!