Inside Out 2's Second Weekend

Inside Out 2 opened well above Hollywood's already high expectations for the film. However, a still bigger surprise has been how the film held up over the following week, taking in another $100 million over the Monday to Thursday period, and another $100 million after that on the following weekend--the latter working out to a mere 34 percent drop from the first weekend to the second. Giving the movie $356 million after just ten days, and still rising fast, this meant the movie blowing far, far past my estimate of its floor ($240 million), and its more plausible ceiling ($330 million), on the way to all but certainly exceeding the highest end of the range I bothered to discuss ($440 million) some time this coming weekend. The film has also done similarly well overseas, more than matching its North American earnings, so that the same is probably going to prove the case with the international and global range (ten days in the movie taking in some $373 million internationally, for a global total north of $700 million+ and climbing fast).

Does this mean Pixar, Disney, the Hollywood blockbuster as we know them are back? Just as anyone paying attention ought to have expected the entertainment press is making the most of Inside Out 2's performance as evidence that they are. Perhaps they are right. But even if they prove to be so they seem to me to be "calling it" far too early. After the last four-and-a-half years, and the terrible last year-and-a-half especially, it will take more than one hit of that kind to show that, and those more interested in understanding the situation than claquing for a film industry absolutely determined to not abandon its lazy, crass, exhausted and recently seemingly failing standard operating procedures would do best to remember that it takes more than one hit to tell us how the market is really going, and show some circumspection about that for the time being.