'Inside Out 2' Sets Global Animated Box Office Record With $295 Million Opening

Inside Out 2

Disney/Pixar's "Inside Out 2" soared past all expectations, busting the box office drought with a spectacular $155 million domestic opening weekend and $295 million worldwide, the latter being the highest global weekend launch ever for an animated film.

In fact, it's the second highest 3-day box office opening for almost any film in the last 18 months, behind only the $162 million opening of "Barbie." Among animated films, it ranks just behind the $182.6 million start of fellow Pixar film "Incredibles 2" as the second highest animated film opening ever before inflation adjustment (or third highest, depending on whether you consider the 2019 CGI "Lion King" remake to be an animated film).

Since theaters reopened in 2021, Disney chased a return to its animated box office dominance that then eluded them amid a series of underperforming titles and pivots of well-reviewed movies like "Turning Red" to streaming under former CEO Bob Chapek.

Since 2021, none of Disney or Pixar's titles have crossed $500 million at the global box office, the closest being last year's "Elemental" after it rebounded from the worst opening in Pixar history thanks to strong post-release word-of-mouth.

But while Disney, like the rest of Hollywood, still tries to figure out how to get audiences to turn out for original animated offerings like they did prior to the pandemic, "Inside Out 2" proves that the studio is just as capable as ever at turning sequels for its established IP into can't-miss cinematic events.

That will be good news for theaters as a fully functioning Disney will combine efforts with the likes of Illumination, DreamWorks, Sony and Paramount's animation divisions for more sustained family turnout with films like "Despicable Me 4," "Transformers One" and "The Wild Robot" coming in Q3. That all leads to Disney's Thanksgiving release of "Moana 2," which is suddenly looking like it could be one of the top hits of the year.

Speaking of Sony, they're also giving theaters reason to smile with "Bad Boys: Ride or Die," which fell just 42% from its $56.5 million opening weekend to gross $33 million in this Father's Day frame. Serving as an alternative to Pixar's lighter offering, "Bad Boys 4" is set to be a solid box office success with a 10-day total of $112 million domestic — just behind the $120 million made to this point by 2020's "Bad Boys For Life" — and $214.6 million worldwide against a $100 million budget, before marketing.

Combined, the "Inside Out" and "Bad Boys" sequels are lifting overall box office totals to $215 million, making this the best weekend at the box office since the second weekend of "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" at the end of last July.

More good news is on the way. While next weekend will see the focus shift to specialty titles like Focus' "The Bikeriders" and Searchlight's "Kinds of Kindness" from Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone, the subsequent weekends should see more films arrive that provide sustained box office support. Those include Paramount's "A Quiet Place: Day One" and Universal/Illumination's "Despicable Me 4" -- then we've got next month's Marvel movie, "Deadpool & Wolverine."

In the meantime, holdovers from the May slump will round out the top 5, with Disney/20th Century's "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" taking third with $5.3 million. That brings its domestic total to $158 million, passing the $146 million unadjusted domestic total of "War for the Planet of the Apes."

Sony/Alcon/DNEG's "The Garfield Movie" takes fourth with $5 million in its fourth weekend, bringing its domestic total to $78.7 million. Along with Paramount's "IF," which dropped 57% and out of the top 5 this weekend with $3.5 million, "Inside Out 2" delivered an expected hit to the legs of these family offerings.

But the strong pre-Pixar runs of "Garfield" and "IF" have allowed them to turn a modest theatrical profit, with "Garfield" clearing a low break-even bar with an Alcon-financed $60 million production budget, while "IF" legged out from its $33 million opening to pass $100 million in North America.