“Inside Out 2” crushes its box office debut

Anxiety turned to Joy for Pixar execs this weekend, as Inside Out 2 cruised to a $155 million domestic debut – the highest opening of any movie so far this year, as well as the second-highest theatrical opening of an animated film… ever.

• 12 million people saw Inside Out 2 over the weekend, according to data from EnTelligence. The last time a movie pulled in north of 10 million people was Barbie (2023) – which, coincidentally, was the last movie to top $100 million during its domestic debut.
• Inside Out 2 also has a current draw of 36% Hispanic and Latino, making its audience more diverse than any other Pixar movie outside of Coco.

Pixar needed a win. The Disney-owned animation studio has struggled at the box office in recent years, with Pixar-made films like Turning Red, Soul, and Luca skipping theaters and going directly to Disney+ during the pandemic.

Pete Docter, Pixar‘s creative chief officer, in a 2023 interview with Variety said the company’s Covid-era, direct-to-streaming strategy “trained” audiences to watch the studio’s movies at home – hence the comparatively less-embraced theatrical releases of 2022’s Lightyear and 2023’s Elemental (which started slow but eventually ended up grossing ~$500 million worldwide).

🤔 Could the US box office be looking up? The real-time box-office revenue gap between 2023 and 2024 shrank from ~26% to ~24% after this past weekend – with tentpole titles like Despicable Me 4 (July 3), Twisters (July 19), and Deadpool & Wolverine (July 26) still yet to debut.