It wasn’t that long ago that there was a real shortage of animated, family film options in movie theaters. Back in 2022, there was a massive gap on the calendar between the end of July and Thanksgiving where no new PG films opened in theaters, and the one that did over Thanksgiving, Disney’s “Strange World,” was a massive bomb.
The fear among some box office watchers was that family films would not recover at the box office post-COVID, that families wouldn’t take the risk to expose their kids to the virus and that those movies did better on streaming anyways. Pixar movies famously were shunted to Disney+ and “Lightyear” also proceeded to flop in 2022. It bore out that you needed a steady stream of family movies throughout the year for these films to still succeed. If movie trailers are going to work on anyone, it’s kids who need to be in the theater to see them to know what to get excited for next.
With the success of Sony Pictures Animation‘s “GOAT” this weekend, it feels like that steady drumbeat of family movies is alive and well. “GOAT” in just its second weekend in theaters has surpassed $100 million at the global box office, and it managed to narrowly climb to No. 1 at the domestic box office this weekend ($17 million) after falling behind “Wuthering Heights” in its first weekend. The film had a drop of only 38 percent week-over-week, and that’s factoring in the 4-day President’s Day holiday, meaning its drop would’ve been even lower if you only compared the 3-day period.
“GOAT” was already in good shape, as its opening weekend of $35.1 million in North America was the biggest for an original animated film since “Elemental” in summer 2023. But though the film opened in the middle of February and not over Christmas or in the middle of summer when kids are home from school, Sony clearly recognized that the film would do well with kids who most likely saw the trailer ahead of watching “Zootopia 2,” which is now incredibly in its 13th week in the domestic Top 10. Maybe there’s something to attracting kids to yet another movie about a society of talking animals, even if the main character in this case is an undersized goat who plays basketball instead of fighting crime.
All of this is important to the industry because, according to Comscore, movies rated PG both in 2024 and in 2025 outgrossed movies rated PG-13. Last year leaned on the success of “Zootopia 2” and also “Lilo & Stitch,” among others, but it also had some more modest hits like “Dog Man,” which opened to a similar range as “GOAT” also in this same winter window and wound up grossing $144.6 million globally.
Coming up soon on the PG, family front is Pixar’s “Hoppers,” followed by Illumination’s “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” on April 1, Angel Studios’ “Animal Farm” on May 1, Sony’s live-action family comedy “The Breadwinner” with Nate Bargatze in late May, and “Toy Story 5,” “Minions & Monsters,” the live-action “Moana,” “PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie,” and “Air Bud Returns” to round out the summer.