31 years since Pixar’s plastic heroes first came to life on the big screen, Toy Story’s still got a friend in m— well, all of us actually! Yes, seven years since we last caught up with Woody, Buzz, Jessie and the gang in 2019’s better than you remember it Toy Story 4, Andrew Stanton’s toys vs tech fivequel Toy Story 5 has rode like the wind into cinemas this week and proved that those toys and their stories have still got it where it counts at the global box office.
Per Variety’s reporting, Toy Story 5 took a mammoth $312 million globally over its opening weekend, bagging $160 million stateside and a further $152 million across international territories. Not only has this given the continuing adventures of Woody Pride and co the biggest domestic open of the year so far (generously outpacing The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s $131.7 million), it’s also made Toy Story 5 the best-opening movie in the franchise to date, and the second-best-opening animated movie at the American box office of all time, bested only by Pixar’s own 2018 super sequel Incredibles 2.
Given the global appetite for animated sequels of late (Ne Zha 2, Zootropolis 2, and Inside Out 2 have all landed among the highest grossing movies ever made in recent years), the mind boggles at just how far Toy Story 5 could go by the time it reaches the end of its run — especially given that the summer is only just beginning, school holidays are right around the corner, and Illumination’s sure-to-be-massive Minions & Monsters is still a decent couple of weeks off yet. And to think some folk believed Toy Story 3 was the end of the franchise, eh? Just you wait and see — these toyetic little vampires are gonna outlive us all, folks! (And if they continue to be as strong as this latest one then, honestly, we’re not complaining…)