Pixar had a big bounce back year in 2023. After a few years of movies being relegated to Disney+ (namely Pete Docter's Soul, Enrico Casarosa's Luca and Domee Shi's Turning Red) and box office disappointments (Angus MacLane's Lightyear), the animation studio got a big theatrical win with Peter Sohn's Elemental last summer. While that film took about a month to be considered a success, however, the latest title from the animation studio, Kelsey Mann's Inside Out 2, just took a faster path to that designation by having the biggest opening weekend of 2024 to date.
The sequel featuring the voices of Amy Poehler and Maya Hawke put on quite a show in the last three days. Check out the results in the Top 10 chart below and join me after for analysis.
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| TITLE | WEEKEND GROSS | DOMESTIC GROSS | LW | THTRS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Inside Out 2 | $155,000,000 | $155,000,000 | N/A | 4,440 |
| 2. Bad Boys: Ride Or Die | $33,000,000 | $112,240,000 | 1 | 3,885 |
| 3. Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes | $5,200,000 | $157,804,082 | 5 | 2,600 |
| 4. The Garfield Movie | $5,000,000 | $78,525,000 | 2 | 3,411 |
| 5. The Watchers | $3,665,000 | $13,665,000 | 4 | 3,351 |
| 6. IF | $3,450,000 | $100,901,000 | 3 | 3,006 |
| 7. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga | $2,425,000 | $63,126,000 | 6 | 1,874 |
| 8. The Fall Guy | $1,500,000 | $87,906,000 | 7 | 1,663 |
| 9. The Strangers: Chapter 1 | $760,000 | $33,896,299 | 10 | 1,027 |
| 10. Tuesday | $292,471 | $324,569 | 28 | 654 |
Inside Out 2 More Than Lives Up To Expectations With The Biggest Opening Weekend Of 2024
Released in 2015, Pete Docter's Inside Out was a big hit for Pixar. At the time it hit theaters, the movie had the second biggest opening weekend in Pixar history (behind only Lee Unkrich's Toy Story 3), and it finished its big screen run not only earning $850.6 million worldwide, but considered by fans to be among the best films that Pixar has made.
As a result, it's not exactly an overwhelming surprise to learn that Inside Out 2 has had a phenomenal opening weekend in the heart of summer 2024. We may have seen a number of box office disappointments so far this year, but this title has always looked like a surefire hit, and it lived up to expectations.
According to The Numbers, early numbers show that Inside Out 2 made $155 million over the last three days, which means that it just had the best weekend at the box office since the release of Greta Gerwig's Barbie last July. It nearly doubled the debut earnings of Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part 2 (the sci-fic blockbuster made $82.5 million in its first Friday-to-Sunday back in March), which previously owned the title of best opening weekend of 2024.
Inside Out 2 was far from an inexpensive title to produce, with Variety reporting that the sequel had a $200 million production budget (a figure that doesn't include publicity and marketing costs), but the title is well on its way to proving that the juice was worth the squeeze. The $155 million earned in the United States and Canada was matched by a $140 million gross overseas, which brings its global earnings after just three days to $295 million.
In the context of 2024, that's ridiculously great. Inside Out 2 is already ranked eighth on the list of the biggest films of the year worldwide, having instantly outgrossed earlier releases from this summer including Mark Dindal's The Garfield Movie ($217.7 million to date) and Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah's Bad Boys: Ride Or Die (which I'll discuss more in depth later in this feature).
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It won't be long until the new animated 2024 release is positioned alongside Dune: Part 2 ($711.4 million), Adam Wingard's Godzilla x King: The New Empire ($565 million) and Mike Mitchell's Kung Fu Panda 4 ($545.4 million) at the top of the worldwide chart, and I can say that with extreme confidence due to not only the opening weekend numbers, but the buzz. Not only are critics are loving the film (CinemaBlend's Sarah El Mahmoud gave it 4.5 stars in her review), but movie-goers are very much on the same page – as indicated by the 96 percent Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes and the "A" grade delivered from CinemaScore surveys.
Inside Out 2 is likely to dominate for the rest of June, as it is the only major family-centric release of the month, but things will get interesting in early July with the arrival of Chris Renaud and Patrick Delage's Despicable Me 4.
The Tremendous Success Of Inside Out 2 Doesn't Stop Bad Boys: Ride Or Die From Having An Excellent Second Weekend
It can often be the case that the success of one major blockbuster will steal attention away from all of the other titles that are simultaneously released... but that's a circ*mstance that can be mitigated if the film industry is smart about targeted demographics. Earlier this year, we saw Dune: Part 2 and Kung Fu Panda 4 comfortably exist together while playing on the big screen, and this weekend, we are seeing a similar relationship unfold between Inside Out 2 and Bad Boys: Ride Or Die.
The new action film starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence isn't nearly as big as the new release from Pixar (it's only made $112.2 million domestically to date), but it's notable that the arrival of Inside Out 2 didn't take a massive bite out of ticket sales. Bad Boys: Ride Or Die has gotten pushed to second place, but its grosses weekend-to-weekend only fell 42 percent, which is outstanding. The title added $33 million to its domestic earnings after winning the box office last weekend bringing in $56.5 million.
The numbers overall are still smaller than the performance of Bad Boys For Life in January 2020, but the numbers are arguably more muscular (the third installment of the Bad Boys franchise experienced a 46 percent weekend-to-weekend drop after its debut).
Thanks to the ticket sales from this past weekend both domestically and abroad, Bad Boys: Ride Or Die has now seen its global box office earnings exceed $200 million – the blockbuster having made $214.6 million to date. Sitting just a few million dollars behind The Garfield Movie, it will very likely enter the Top 10 for the year in the coming days and should stake out a claim to be one of the biggest earners of the year before the end of its theatrical run.
Looking ahead, Inside Out 2 will very likely dominate the box office again next week, but the Top 10 should get a nice shakeup with the wide releases of both Jeff Nichols' The Bikeriders and Joshua John Miller's The Exorcism starring Russell Crowe. Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday for my latest box office report, and take a look at all of the films set to be released in the coming weeks and months with our 2024 Movie Release Calendar.
Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor
Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.
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