‘Inside Out 2’ Is Now the Biggest Animated Movie Ever

Pixar is again on high. Their newest movie, Inside Out 2, will not be solely successful, it’s not the top-grossing animated movie in historical past — with a reasonably substantial asterisk.

Disney and Pixar are touting that Inside Out 2, with its $1.462 billion in grosses worldwide, is now the largest animated hit ever. Its ticket gross sales put it forward of the earlier document holder, 2019’s Frozen II, additionally from Disney, which grossed $1.453 worldwide.

Disney can be touting the truth that Inside Out 2 is the quickest animated movie in historical past to $1 billion. (It took the film 19 days to cross that threshold.) It’s additionally the top-grossing film of 2024, in addition to the one film of the 12 months so far to gross $1 billion.

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Now, with all that stated, what’s the asterisk? It’s this: In making this daring declare, Disney is basically ignoring its personal animated film, 2019’s remake of The Lion King. In the event you embrace The Lion King as an animated film, then it’s the highest-grossing animated film in historical past, with $1.663 billion in worldwide ticket gross sales.

Why does Disney not depend it? They apparently view the film as a “live-action” remake of the unique Lion King, akin to the studio’s live-action variations of Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Magnificence & the Beast, or The Jungle Guide. The distinction, although, is that whereas all of these movies did embrace digitally-animated characters, in addition they featured actual flesh-and-blood actors. 2019’s The Lion King doesn’t. All the “live-action” animals had been truly pc generated.

In actual fact, based on The Lion King’s personal director, Jon Favreau, there is only one “actual shot” in the whole film, plus “1490 rendered photographs created by animators and CG artists.” Favreau joked on Twitter in 2019 that he “slipped in a single single shot we truly photographed in Africa to see if anybody would discover.”

Regardless of all of that, Disney doesn’t contemplate this Lion King an animated film. And when you don’t contemplate it an animated film, then sure, Inside Out 2 is the field workplace champ.