As Thursday’s previews had hinted, it will be a great weekend for Pixar Animation Studios and for Disney, which has only released one blockbuster so far in 2024, namely Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. After debuting with $13 million in Thursday afternoon previews, Inside Out 2 literally exploded on Friday with a debut of $62 million (including $13 on Thursday). This is by far the best opening day of the year and the best since Barbie (which opened with $70.5 million just under a year ago). Not only that: it is the second best debut of all time for the animation genre after The Incredibles 2which debuted with $71.3 million.
For comparison, Wish last year raised $64 million in the U.S. over its entire run. With an A CinemaScore, which will result in great word of mouth, the sky is the limit for Inside Out 2: the impression is that it could close the weekend above 150 million dollars, therefore much above the 100 million that we hypothesized only yesterday (and the 80 that we hypothesized only a few days ago).
Let’s remember that so far the best weekend of the year was reserved for Dune: Part Two, which had grossed $82.5 million in three days. The five best Pixar debuts ever are The Incredibles 2 ($182 million), Finding Dory ($135 million), Toy Story 4 ($120 million) and Toy Story 3 ($110 million): All sequels.
Moving on to the rest of Friday’s rankings, Bad Boys: Ride or Die holds up well with another 8.5 million dollars, rising to 87.7 million overall. The action movie represents a good counter-programming and should collect around thirty million over the weekend, with a drop of only 45% compared to the debut. In third place, however, we find Garfield: A Tasty Missionwhich as expected slowed down on Friday, grossing 1.5 million dollars and rising to a total of 75 million.
Fourth position goes to Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which grosses 1.3 million dollars and rises to 153 million overall, while the horror film The Watchers closes the top-five, with 1.1 million and a total of 11.1 million dollars.
Source: The-Numbers
