Inside Out 2's Staying Power at the Box Office

Speculating about Inside Out 2 as its opening approached I suggested that as a sequel it could not be expected to have the same box office "legs" as its predecessor, especially in the event of a strong opening, with all the front-loading of the gross it tends to portend. As it happened the movie has had a rather stronger opening than the original (even after adjustment for inflation)--but is also at least matching the original with respect to endurance in theaters. The first film roughly quadrupled its opening weekend gross in North America (opening with $90 million and finishing with $356 million). The second film is well on its way to doing the same, with 3.7 times its opening taken in on Friday night ($572 million now in the till), while showing every sign of making up the rest of the distance (another $40 million will do the job), getting so near as to make no difference, or maybe even exceeding it, before it departs theaters altogether--though whatever happens there is no denying that it has already been a major success by this measure, like every other.

All this is, of course, welcome news to Hollywood--clearly hoping that this is a sign of a return to the pre-pandemic norm with regard to the ability of brand name franchise films like this to get people to theaters at the old rates. Yet one can also see the performance of the film as indicative of something else, namely the same thing that helped make Top Gun 2 such a hit back in 2022--the combination of particularly intense media cheerleading by the media with the unusual faintness of the competition. (Family films like IF and The Garfield Movie proved less than colossal hits, and the Despicable Me sequel came along only when Inside Out 2 was in its fourth weekend of play, and even then achieved a respectable gross rather than a sensational one, taking eight days to hit the $150 million mark that Inside Out 2 did in its first three.)

The same combination of cheerleading and weak competition will also work in favor of that other big brand-name Disney production which will be hitting theaters just as Inside Out 2 is fading from them, Deadpool & Wolverine. Along with the undeniably great press for the film, it has had very little to compare with it with regard to big, splashy action this summer thus far (cough, cough, The Fall Guy, cough, cough, Furiosa), and seems unlikely to get any in what remains of the season after its release--the more in as the expectations for Twisters run so far behind those for Deadpool, and by big summer movie standards the prospects for Borderlands look as bleak as the latter movie's space Western landscapes.