Toy Story 5 Shatters Box Office Debut Record For The Franchise

Toy Story 5 isn’t playing around at the box office.

The new Pixar animated movie is the fifth installment in the company’s flagship franchise (and the sixth overall when including the high-concept sci-fi spinoff Lightyear), which kicked off with their first-ever feature in 1995. 2026’s Toy Story 5 reunites many of the franchise’s core characters – including Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), Jessie (Joan Cusack), Bo Peep (Annie Potts), Hamm (John Ratzenberger), Rex (Wallace Shawn), and Forky (Tony Hale) – for a brand-new adventure that follows the toys’ security being threatened by a new tablet device, Lilypad (Greta Lee), that commands the attention of their owner, Bonnie (Scarlett Spears).

Per Deadline, as of Saturday morning, Toy Story 5 is projected to earn a 3-day total between $160 and $170 million at the domestic box office by the end of its opening weekend. This total, which lands it at No. 1 on the domestic chart for the weekend, sees it earning what is by far the best opening weekend of the entire franchise, blasting past the previous record-holder, 2019’s Toy Story 4 ($120.9 million).

When the previous installments are adjusted for inflation, Toy Story 5 still has the potential to come out on top. If it hits the upper bound of its range, it will be able to easily beat 1995’s Toy Story ($29.1 million unadjusted/$63.5 million adjusted), 1999’s Toy Story 2 (during its wide expansion, $57.4 million/$114.3 million), 2019’s Toy Story 4 ($120.9 million/$158.2 million), and 2022’s Lightyear ($50.6 million/$57.2 million) while squeaking past 2010’s Toy Story 3 ($110.3 million/$169.6 million).

It is also earning the best box office debut of 2026 so far (ahead of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie‘s $131.7 million) and one of Pixar’s best box office debuts ever.

It is looking like Toy Story 5 will land at No. 2 on Pixar’s all-time chart, behind only Incredibles 2 ($182.7 million). Below, see a breakdown of the box office performance (not adjusted for inflation) for the Pixar movies with the 10 biggest opening weekends (which is mostly the same list as their Top 10 highest-grossing movies, except The Incredibles is swapped for 2017’s Coco, which had a middling debut of $50.8 million before climbing to $814.6 million worldwide):

It ultimately remains to be seen if it will have a similar multiplier to the previous two installments in the franchise. While it has the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of the series (aside from Lightyear, which has 74%), Toy Story 5 reviews have still earned it a superb, Certified Fresh, 94%. This could help it achieve a similar trajectory, which would see it becoming Pixar’s sixth billion-dollar movie in history. The fact that its debut beat their all-time biggest title, Inside Out 2, also shows that it has the potential to break the company’s all-time record in the long run.

Even if it doesn’t become Pixar’s highest-grossing movie ever, Toy Story 5 is still set up for success. While the movie has an enormous reported budget of $250 million (the biggest of the franchise, beating the $200 million spent on TS3, TS4, and Lightyear), it most likely doesn’t need to earn more than about $625 million in order to break even. This should be a very easy benchmark for it to clear, considering the fact that every Top 10 Pixar movie it beat with this debut record made more than that number.

Toy Story 5 should help bolster Pixar as they continue to navigate a period of box office doldrums in the wake of worldwide theatrical shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although Inside Out 2 was a hit, it was their only post-2020 movie to earn more than $500 million. While some of those movies were middling successes, such as 2023’s Elemental ($496.4 million worldwide against a reported $200 million budget) and 2026’s Hoppers ($388.9 million against $150 million), others were outright flops, including Lightyear ($226.4 million against $200 million) and 2025’s Elio ($154 million against roughly $150 million).

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