So what's the biggest opening weekend for a Pixar movie? Pixar movies aren't just magical outings for kids and audiences – they're magic at the box office too. Many of their movies dominate the list of all-time biggest box office for animated movies. Finding Nemo, which stars Albert Brooks as a fish searching for his son, is in the top 20 earners of all time, animated or live action. Whenever Disney's CG studio opens a movie, it means big bucks for the Magic Kingdom.
The record for biggest opening weekend for a Pixar movie goes to Toy Story 3. For a movie about toys and playtime, it was all-business at the box office, collecting $109 million from audiences. In a distant second for Pixar opening weekends is The Incredibles, with a still mighty $70.4M opening weekend. Finding Nemo swims in third with $70.2M, but would go on to earn about $200M more worldwide than the superhero family film.
Here's the top ten list of Pixar opening weekends:
- Toy Story 3 – 2010 – $109M
- The Incredibles – 2004 – $70.4M
- Finding Nemo – 2003 – $70.2M
- Up – 2009 – $68.1M
- WALL-E – 2008 – $63M
- Monsters, Inc – 2001 – $62.5M
- Cars – 2006 – $60M
- Toy Story 2 – 1999 – $57.3M
- Ratatouille – 2007 – $47M
- A Bug's Life – 1998 – $33.2M
It's important to note that Pixar doesn't judge its success by box office alone. As of this writing, the studio has snagged 24 Academy Awards, among other trophies. Pixar is one of the best reviewed movie studios of all time, according to Rotten Tomatoes. All of their movies so far have been met with critical and commercial success. If that's not magic, we don't know what is.
