Inside Out 2’s Massive Box Office Turns Pixar Corner, Reconfirms Audiences Want Sequels

Despite the emotional turmoil of growing up, it would seem little Riley of the Inside Out 2 opened to $155 million this past weekend.

Debuting to the second best animated opening day of all-time with $62 million—behind only another Pixar sequel, 2018’s Incredibles 2—the film went on to gross the second best weekend ever in animation, again behind Pixar’s Brad Bird-directed superhero sequel. This debut is also above last year’s animated juggernaut, The Super Mario Bros. Movie. It’s in fact the best opening of any movie since Barbie last July.

The numbers are a much needed win for Pixar, which has seen a brutal couple of years following 2020. That obviously began with the pandemic kneecapping the studio’s new release of Elemental, preferring to wait for the imminent streaming release to Disney+.

The fallout from encouraging families to view Pixar films as streaming fodder culminated in a grim round of layoffs last month where Pixar downsized 14 percent of its workforce.

So the success of Inside Out 2 is a big boon for the beloved animation house, as well as theatrical distribution as a whole, which has seen a historically bleak summer movie season beginning last month. It likewise reinforces several components of conventional thinking, whether accurate or not, percolating throughout the industry.

Pixar, for one, has already signaled they’re pivoting in a more creatively conservative and risk-averse direction. Chief creative officer Pete Docter, who also directed and co-wrote the first Inside Out, told and somewhat diminished) sequel to one of their best films from nearly a decade ago speaks louder.

The lesson will almost assuredly be that a pivot to the “commonality” of mass appeal is a good thing… especially if it’s by way of more sequels. Luckily, Toy Story 5 is already in the pipeline for 2026.

It’s striking that after the relative novelty of Barbie and Oppenheimer both going supernova last July, this summer’s lone successes have been sequels and franchise extensions. While we along with all those who love pure action cinema were crestfallen The Fall Guy.

The takeaway from studios will likely be to continue leaning on audience familiarity with intellectual property and familiar characters/performances. And honestly, in the immediate future that’s probably not the wrong impulse for blockbuster entertainment. Furiosa starred two new faces for that franchise in Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth—who were both ferociously good—but audiences who might have wanted to see Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron back in the Wasteland stayed away. Conversely, Despicable Me 4 might meanwhile be the only other sure-thing left this summer too.

Still, we’d caution putting too much confidence in the “business as usual” strategy as defined by the 2010s. For starters, audiences didn’t mind seeing a belated Mad Max movie back then with a recast lead actor. Furthermore, the cracks in the old formula are still visible from last year’s abundance of superhero movie flops and underperformers, including sequels to first installments that made $1 billion globally (Captain Marvel and Aquaman). Beyond capes, legacy sequels to long dormant series (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny), umpteenth continuations to franchises that have been going steady for decades (Fast X and Mission: Impossible 7), and ostensibly new franchise fodder (The Flash) all went up in smoke.

Audience tastes appear to be in a state of transition, and few folks have figured out what could come next. And honestly, there appears to be more appetite today (up to a point) than half a decade ago for original films as indicated by recent, mid-budget hits like Civil War, and Anyone But You. However, the theatrical business model is currently built around a handful of massive tentpoles underwriting studios’ and exhibitors’ whole fiscal year, and unless your original film is directed by Christopher Nolan, there is little in the way of guarantees that audiences will show up in those numbers for a new concept.

In that case, it would seem for better and worse, franchise sequels continue to be the safest bet in town. For now. This even demonstrably includes Pixar, which in previous decades made its name off audiences turning out for whatever new original film the studio had in the works. Even as the studio began leaning more heavily on sequels to please shareholders in the 2010s, Pixar also produced Brave, Coco, and, of course, Inside Out in that decade. All of them moneymakers. Word of mouth also eventually carried Elemental into profit, making one wonder how it (or, say, Soul) might have performed under pre-Disney+ conditions.

Be that as it may, studios’ reliance on IP will be tested outside of the surest of things in the months ahead. For instance, we have a Twister reboot in July without the original leads and a Beetlejuice legacy sequel nearly 40 years later in September, plus new Alien, Gladiator, and superhero movies without fan favorite castings in the near horizon. It seems audiences still prefer turning out in blockbuster numbers for characters and stories they’re familiar with, although it remains an open question which ones…