Inside Out 2 is now Pixar’s biggest movie ever, passing the $1.68b mark

NEW YORK – Emotions are running wild at the box office this summer. Pixar’s newest animated feature, Inside Out 2, passed the US$1.25 billion (S$1.68 billion) mark globally on July 10, making it the studio’s highest-grossing film of all time, not adjusted for inflation. It has earned US$543 million domestically and US$708 million internationally.

Animated superhero flick Incredibles 2, which earned $1.24 billion worldwide in 2018, was previously in the top spot for Pixar, which is owned by Disney.

Inside Out 2 is also the most successful film of 2024 so far and the fourth highest-grossing animated movie ever – behind Frozen (2013), The Super Mario Bros Movie (2023) and Frozen II (2019). Its profits are poised to keep climbing as it is released in more countries, including Japan.

Inside Out 2, Pixar’s 28th movie, continues the story of Riley as she turns 13 years old and grapples with puberty and her bevy of personified emotions, now including anxiety.

Directed by Kelsey Mann, the movie has a voice cast that includes Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Phyllis Smith, Ayo Edebiri and Yvette Nicole Brown.

It opened on June 14 to rave reviews from critics and audiences, who bestowed it with an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls, the same score as Inside Out, which made about US$860 million globally in 2015.

The sequel also surpassed opening weekend box-office predictions, collecting about US$155 million in the United States and Canada, about 70 per cent more than anticipated.

Since 2023’s “Barbenheimer” phenomenon – when Barbie and Oppenheimer opened simultaneously on July 21 – the box office has been generally sluggish, without a single film achieving phenomenon status like Greta Gerwig’s smash or Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-dominating hit.

Inside Out 2 has filled that gap and is the first movie to clear the billion-dollar hurdle since Barbie.

It was a crucial win for Pixar, which has had a wobbly run since the Covid-19 pandemic started keeping audiences home in March 2020. Its film Onward was released in theatres on March 6, 2020, and its next three movies – Soul, Turning Red and Luca – went straight to the Disney+ streaming service.

In 2023, the original Pixar movie Elemental (2023) had a weak start but managed to reverse course, eventually collecting about US$500 million worldwide. NYTIMES