Pixar and Disney’s Inside Out 2 has a big weekend ahead of it as it prepares to close out June by becoming the first film of 2024 to jump the $1 billion mark in worldwide ticket sales. It’s expected to accomplish the feat on Sunday or Monday, faster than any animated movie in history, or 17 to 18 days.
Nor will it have any trouble fending off the competition and staying No. 1 in its third outing ahead of A Quiet Place: Part One and Kevin Costner’s ambitious $100 million period Western, Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter One.
No one expected Inside Out 2 — which follows Riley as she turns 13 and is confronted with a new crew of emotions who must co-exist with her other emotions — to turn into the must-see movie of the year so far, much as Barbie did almost a year ago. In the process, moviegoing is on the rise overall (Sony’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die, which opened a week before Inside Out, began the rebound).
A Quiet Place: Day One is tracking to open to $40 million-$45 million, a strong showing for a prequel that doesn’t feature either the series’ original stars, including John Krasinski — who doubled as director-writer — and Emily Blunt. Instead, Michael Sarnoski directed the prequel based on a story he and Krasinski came up with together. Lupita Nyong’o and Thomas Quinn star.
Horizon is without a doubt the biggest curiosity factor of the weekend considering Costner left behind a lucrative gig on Taylor Sheridan’s hit show Yellowstone in order make his decades-long passion project a reality, four period Western movies. Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter One is tracking to open in the $10 million to $12 million range, a worrisome start for a three-hour movie costing $100 million to produce. Many box office pundits believe the movie will over perform in America’s heartland and come in higher.
Warners agreed to distribute and market the movie for a fee in the U.S. Costner — who has tirelessly promoted the movie — invested $38 million of his own money, while two mystery investors also ponied up equity. The rest came from selling off foreign rights with the help of sales outfit K5 International, which premiered the film at the Cannes Film Festival.
Horizon: An American Saga: Chapter Two opens in short order on Aug. 16 in one of the unusual distribution schemes in Hollywood history. (Costner also put up most of the marketing money.)
Inside Out 2 has shattered any number of records since beginning its global run just over two weeks ago, helping to revive the lagging 2024 box office and turning June gloom into June bloom.
The latest: on Tuesday, it landed at No. 10 on the list of the top-grossing animated films of all time at the domestic box office with $387.8 million in ticket sales. Overseas, it finished the day with a cume of $411.9 million for a global booty of $798.2 million, just a tad behind Shrek the Third ($799.5 million).
Frozen II, from Pixar’s sister division Walt Disney Animation Studios, is the top-grossing animated film of time at $1.45 billion globally. The last animated film to cross $1 billion was Illumination and Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie in 2023, while the last Pixar title to do so was Incredibles 2 in 2019.
Inside Out 2 will become only the eleventh film to jump $100 billion mark, and the seventh from either Pixar or Walt Disney Animation.