Disney’s Toy Story 5 romped to the best opening weekend of the year, raking in $160 million in North America, industry estimates showed Sunday, a record for the much-loved Pixar franchise.
The sequel, which debuted over Father’s Day weekend, features Woody the cowboy, Buzz Lightyear and their gang of toys fighting for survival against competition from technology, particularly a tablet.
“This is prime family moviegoing season and Toy Story is delivering,” said industry analyst David A. Gross.
Gross called it “another sensational opening for a Pixar series sequel,” noting that Toy Story 5 had the best starting weekend for any film in the franchise, an estimated 37 per cent higher than Toy Story 4. That will likely make it the second-biggest animated movie opening of all time, behind Disney unit Pixar’s Incredibles 2, which made $182.7m in June 2018, he said.
“Family moviegoing has been leading the industry since it came roaring back from the pandemic in 2023,” Gross added. “A lot of the genre’s success is coming from sequels, live-action remakes of animation pictures, and hybrid combinations.” Toy Story 5 — which returns with Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Joan Cusack voicing key characters — opened on 4,425 screens across the United States and Canada over the weekend, Exhibitor Relations’ estimates showed.
