2024 has its first mega-blockbuster, and it is Pixar’s Inside Out 2.
After the final weekend of June, Inside Out 2 has grossed $1.014 billion worldwide; $469 million in the United States and $545 million throughout the rest of the world. That makes it the first movie of the calendar year to cross $1 billion at the global box office.
Obviously that also makes it the top-grossing movie of the year to date. The #2 film is Dune: Part Two which has grossed a relatively puny $711 million worldwide.
Inside Out 2 is also the first movie to gross $1 billion worldwide since last summer’s biggest hit Barbie. That film finished its box-office run with $1.445 billion worldwide, a number that might prove tough for Inside Out 2 to top.
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Still, Inside Out 2’s massive success worldwide is a major victory for Pixar after several years and movies that saw its fortunes dim significantly. Disney released all of the beloved studio’s Covid-era films direct to streaming, and its track record after its return to theaters was very spotty, particularly from the costly flop Lightyear. Last year’s Elemental got some of Pixar’s weakest reviews in history but wound up grossing a relatively solid $496 million worldwide.
That said, the fact that Inside Out 2 has already doubled the “relatively solid” gross of Elemental says a lot about how big this movie is, and how much Pixar needed this sort of blockbuster to help reestablish its stature as a major financial force in the world of animation. (Creatively, I don’t think its stature was ever really in doubt, they still make wonderful movies.)
Next we’ll see how the film compares to the big competition opening in theaters this weekend, Despicable Me 4, which will be fighting for that same family audience over the long Independence Day weekend. Despicable Me 3 grossed $1.035 billion in theaters in 2017. The most recent prequel in that franchise, Minions: The Rise of Gru, earned $940 million in 2022.
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