Let’s Go to the Movies! Inside Out 2 Is Here, and Hollywood Can Breathe Again
The big new character in Pixar’s Inside Out 2 is Anxiety, which makes sense, given how much pressure was being loaded onto the film before its release. In a Time feature, Pixar’s creative head and director of the first movie, Pete Docter, candidly admitted: “If this doesn’t do well at the theater, I think it just means we’re going to have to think even more radically about how we run our business.” Hollywood at large—the executives, producers, financiers, and other key decision-makers whose opinions determine which movies get made and why—was similarly biting its fingernails. After the writers’ and actors’ strikes, many productions had been postponed, and the employment rate among entertainment workers was the lowest it had been in thirty years, with ticket sales down 27% compared to 2023. Simply put, Inside Out broke a curse.
Nineteen days after its release, Riley and her colorful team of emotions had grossed $478 million in North America and $567 million internationally for a worldwide tally of $1.045 billion. It’s the fastest animated release to join the billion-dollar club. When Inside Out 2 landed in theaters on June 14, the film shattered expectations with $155 million domestically, almost doubling industry expectations and overtaking Dune: Part 2 as the biggest opening of the year. It was also the first movie since last July’s Barbie ($162 million) to debut above $100 million. Since then, the second chapter of this story has kept the top spot on box office charts for three consecutive weekends and became the highest-grossing movie domestically and globally of 2024. Earlier this week, it surpassed the lifetime gross of its predecessor from 2015 ($859 million worldwide).
Those benchmarks are a triumph for Pixar, which has struggled at the box office in recent years as its parent company, Disney, sent films like Turning Red, Soul, and Luca directly to Disney+ during the pandemic. Thinking of the cold theatrical releases of 2022’s Lightyear and 2023’s Elemental, Docter stressed that this COVID-era strategy “trained” audiences to watch the studio’s movies at home.
Inside Out 2 is also good news for movie theaters, which were nervously waiting for something, anything to bring people back during this otherwise depressing summer season. Following the underwhelming performances of big-budget 2024 releases such as The Fall Guy and Furiosa, panic was growing. Delaying the debut on the big screen to wait for the actors (especially Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet) to promote it properly around the world was not enough to make Dune: Part 2 a box office hit. Franchise movies such as Godzilla x Kong, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, and Bad Boys: Ride or Die all played to expectations. But the industry definitely needed a movie to massively outperform all predictions. Inside Out 2 is that winner, reassuring Hollywood that families (once the most reliable audience of all) are still willing to flood multiplexes for the right film. Anxiety can be packed away. It’s time for Joy to become the box office’s summer mascot.
Source: Variety
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The big new character in Pixar’s Inside Out 2 is Anxiety, which makes sense, given how much pressure was being loaded onto the film before its release. In a Time feature, Pixar’s creative head and director of the first movie, Pete Docter, candidly admitted: “If this doesn’t do well at the theater, I think it just means we’re going to have to think even more radically about how we run our business.” Hollywood at large—the executives, producers, financiers, and other key decision-makers whose opinions determine which movies get made and why—was similarly biting its fingernails. After the writers’ and actors’ strikes, many productions had been postponed, and the employment rate among entertainment workers was the lowest it had been in thirty years, with ticket sales down 27% compared to 2023. Simply put, Inside Out broke a curse.
Nineteen days after its release, Riley and her colorful team of emotions had grossed $478 million in North America and $567 million internationally for a worldwide tally of $1.045 billion. It’s the fastest animated release to join the billion-dollar club. When Inside Out 2 landed in theaters on June 14, the film shattered expectations with $155 million domestically, almost doubling industry expectations and overtaking Dune: Part 2 as the biggest opening of the year. It was also the first movie since last July’s Barbie ($162 million) to debut above $100 million. Since then, the second chapter of this story has kept the top spot on box office charts for three consecutive weekends and became the highest-grossing movie domestically and globally of 2024. Earlier this week, it surpassed the lifetime gross of its predecessor from 2015 ($859 million worldwide).
Those benchmarks are a triumph for Pixar, which has struggled at the box office in recent years as its parent company, Disney, sent films like Turning Red, Soul, and Luca directly to Disney+ during the pandemic. Thinking of the cold theatrical releases of 2022’s Lightyear and 2023’s Elemental, Docter stressed that this COVID-era strategy “trained” audiences to watch the studio’s movies at home.
Inside Out 2 is also good news for movie theaters, which were nervously waiting for something, anything to bring people back during this otherwise depressing summer season. Following the underwhelming performances of big-budget 2024 releases such as The Fall Guy and Furiosa, panic was growing. Delaying the debut on the big screen to wait for the actors (especially Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet) to promote it properly around the world was not enough to make Dune: Part 2 a box office hit. Franchise movies such as Godzilla x Kong, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, and Bad Boys: Ride or Die all played to expectations. But the industry definitely needed a movie to massively outperform all predictions. Inside Out 2 is that winner, reassuring Hollywood that families (once the most reliable audience of all) are still willing to flood multiplexes for the right film. Anxiety can be packed away. It’s time for Joy to become the box office’s summer mascot.
Source: Variety
Share:
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