‘Inside Out 2’ just beat the ‘The Lion King’ to become the highest-grossing animation of all time

Despite having been released in theaters months ago, Inside Out 2 is still making waves. This year’s biggest box office hit has overtaken another Disney giant, to become the ninth highest-grossing movie of all time. The film jumped over 2019’s The Lion King after another impressive weekend in theatres.

Inside Out 2 has been breaking records since it landed in theatres on June 14. The follow-up to the already very successful Inside Out shattered its predecessor’s records with a massive opening weekend turnout. The film’s opening weekend was the biggest in Pixar’s history, with a whopping global take of $294.2 million. Since then, the hype over the film appears to have not died down, as, in its twelfth week in theatres, it’s still raking it in.

We may now be in back-to-school season, but during the last weekend of August transitioning into September the box office was still feeling the love. The weekend pushed Inside Out 2‘s global earnings to $1.666 billion which vaulted it ahead of 2019’s The Lion King and firmly into the top 10 in the Top Lifetime Grosses list. The Disney/Pixar film is now the highest-grossing animated film of all time. (Some may argue that Avatar is animated, but given it heavily relies on mocap, it isn’t labeled as such.)

Disney is feeling the sun

It was a good summer for Disney, as Deadpool & Wolverine also raked in the money, so far having made $1.26 billion at the box office, placing it 26th on the list. These two Disney films are the only ones to have broken the $1 billion barrier this year—a much-needed win for Disney, which has been lagging in recent years. Not far behind them though is Illumination/Universal’s Despicable Me 4. The kid-friendly film has just rocket-launched itself past the $900 million mark. It would seem that no, the kids are not yet bored of Minions.

This summer’s sci-fi horror, Alien: Romulas is also doing pretty well for itself as it closes in on $300 million, if it only stretches its tentacles further. Its current standing of $289 million makes it the second-highest-grossing movie in the franchise behind Prometheus. Despite, or maybe because of all the controversy surrounding It Ends With Us, the film is similarly also on track to blow past $300 million soon. Alien: Romulus may be the on-screen horror, but the marketing for It Ends With Us was the real scare of the summer.