‘Inside Out 2’ a Box Office Smash on Opening Weekend with Record-Setting Earnings for 2024

Inside Out set a very high bar when it premiered to critical acclaim in 2015, even going on to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 88th Academy Awards. But Pixar has managed to do the seeming-impossible by creating a follow-up film nearly as buzz-worthy and successful as the first, if not more, if its opening weekend is anything to go by.

Inside Out 2 is an animated coming-of-age comedy that takes place two years after the previous film, picking back up with now 13-year-old Riley Andersen (Kensington Tallman) as she enters high school. And with this exciting and intimidating fresh phase of life come brand new personified emotions like Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and Anxiety (Maya Hawke), who join returning core crew Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Tony Hale), Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Liza Lapira) to work together in influencing Riley’s thoughts and actions.

With the aforementioned additional emotions as well as the high-school setting, Inside Out 2 is a film with the entertainment value, nuance, and relatability to appeal to a wider audience, which has been reflected in its earnings. After opening in theaters across the United States on June 14, the film grossed $155 million domestically and another $140 million from only 38 international markets in its first few days out. With the total $295 million worldwide earnings from opening weekend, Inside Out 2 has established itself as the biggest movie in the world opening in 2024 thus far, and the second best-opening animated film domestically behind fellow Pixar title Incredibles 2.

Considering its current numbers, Inside Out 2 is poised to become one of the year’s highest-earning films, if not outright take the top spot. As it stands now at the time of this article, the film is already the eighth highest-grossing title worldwide, with Dune: Part Two sitting at the top with $711,844,358.

No matter how it all shakes up, it’s clear that Pixar has created yet another marvelous, must-see movie, so feel free to judge for yourself by catching it now in theaters or potentially later this summer for streaming on Disney+.