“Inside Out 2” has been the biggest movie of 2024 for months now, and is continuing to break records nearly three months into its wildly impressive theatrical run. With a solid Labor Day weekend in the books for the animated sequel, it has now moved further up the all-time charts to become the ninth-biggest movie in box office history. With this latest milestone, a debate that has raged since 2019 has been put to rest (one element of it, anyway).
Director Kelsey Mann’s “Inside Out 2” added another $2.7 million this past weekend, staying in the top ten in its 12th frame. With that, the film has now amassed $651.2 million domestically. More importantly, its global total sits at $1.671 billion. That means it sits comfortably at number nine all-time, just ahead of 2019’s “live-action” remake of “The Lion King” ($1.662 billion). That is hugely important as any debate that lingered as to what the highest-grossing animated movie of all time is has now been put to bed.
For what it’s worth, Disney had already previously declared “Inside Out 2” to be the biggest animated movie ever once it passed “Frozen 2” ($1.45 billion) in late July. Yet, there are many out there who would argue that Jon Favreau’s 2019 remake of Disney’s 1994 animated classic is also an animated movie, despite being photorealistic and designed to look like live action. The film is composed almost entirely of CGI, save for one tiny live-action shot. Hence, some debate has lingered regarding what the biggest animated movie ever actually is.
When “Frozen II” and “The Lion King” hit theaters in 2019 and made their way up the all-time box office charts. “Lion King” ended up higher overall but “Frozen II” was declared, at the time, to be the biggest animated movie ever. The debate began then, and “Inside Out 2” recently re-ignited it.
Inside Out 2 is the biggest animated movie ever, but…
To whatever degree it even matters, the debate has been firmly extinguished. “Inside Out 2” is now the biggest animated movie ever; there’s no question of that. The only movies above it as of this writing are “Jurassic World” ($1.67 billion), “Spider-Man: No Way Home” ($1.92 billion), “Avengers: Infinity War” ($2 billion), “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” ($2.07 billion), “Titanic” ($2.26 billion), “Avatar: The Way of Water” ($2.32 billion), “Avengers: Endgame” ($2.79 billion), and “Avatar” ($2.92 billion). Any day now, “Inside Out 2” will overtake “Jurassic World.” That’s probably as far as it will go though, as it’s finally winding down after a run for the ages.
The question of whether “The Lion King” is a live-action or an animated film still lacks a definitive answer. Unfortunately, box office records can’t settle such a thing. Even director Jon Favreau couldn’t provide a straight answer when this question was first being asked in 2019. Per Favreau…
“Well, it’s difficult because it’s neither, really. It depends what standard you’re using. Because there’s no real animals and there’s no real cameras and there’s not even any performance that’s being captured that’s underlying data that’s real. Everything is coming through the hands of artists. But to say it’s animated I think is misleading as far as what the expectations might be. And it also changes the way you sit and watch it.”
The debate will likely be stirred up once again in December when director Barry Jenkins’ “Mufasa: The Lion King” hits theaters. The only somewhat good news there is that the sequel/prequel is very unlikely to perform as well as its predecessor, so at least we won’t have to have the box office portion of this conversation again.
“Inside Out 2” is in theaters now.
