Box office: Inside Out 2 sets new records in its second week

Fellow family films IF and The Garfield Movie had the week's strongest holds, too.

Anxiety (Maya Hawke) may have taken charge of Riley’s mind in Inside Out 2, but there’s no anxiety about the film’s box-office performance.

Inside Out 2 keeps going from strength to strength.

• It is now the seventh movie ever—and the first movie this decade—to gross over $100 million in its second weekend.

  • It is also the first animated film to do this well in its second week.

• It dropped only 35% or so this week from its opening last week—an unusually strong hold for a film doing such massive business.

  • Among post-Covid blockbusters, only Top Gun: Maverick and The Super Mario Bros. Movie have had similar or better second-week holds.

• And in just ten days, it has grossed $355 million in North America and $724 million worldwide, passing Dune: Part Two to become the top-grossing movie of 2024 both domestically and worldwide.

  • The only movie this decade that had earned more money in North America at this point in its release is Spider-Man: No Way Home.

How high can Inside Out 2 go? At this point, it’s hard to say.

Unlike previous family films that went entire months without competition, this film will be up against Despicable Me 4 in nine days.

That film’s studio, Illumination, has been doing much, much better at the box office than Disney-Pixar this decade (Sing 2, Minions: The Rise of Gru, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie were all bigger than any of the animated films Disney has put out over the past four years, and even Migration did better than all but one of those Disney-Pixar films), and it could take a big bite out of the family-movie audience.

But at this point, Inside Out 2 might have built up so much momentum that it can just steamroll right through whatever challenge Despicable Me poses.

Then again, Inside Out 2 might also be creating more space for family films as a whole; rising tides lift all boats, and all that. Only two films in this week’s top ten had better holds than Inside Out 2, and both of them were family films: IF dropped only 23% in its sixth week, while The Garfield Movie dropped only 24.5% in its fifth week.

So, maybe Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4 will help each other? Maybe families will be more inclined to just go to multiplex and make up their minds what to see once they get there, now that they know they have a range of options?

As ever, we shall see.

And now, a few more stats and facts re: this week’s top ten, title by title: