Unsurprisingly, Pixar Animation Studios has tons of box office achievements under its belt over multiple decades of creating motion pictures. Motion pictures like Up, Coco, and Incredibles 2 (among many others) made the Pixar name synonymous with box office success. Even after Disney controversially sent acclaimed Pixar films like Soul and Turning Red straight to Disney+ in the early 2020s, Inside Out 2 still became a beast in summer 2024 with a $1.69 billion worldwide gross. That dethroned 2019’s The Lion King as the biggest animated film of all time globally until Ne Zha 2 showed up.
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Even with that phenomenal track record, one Pixar smash hit stands out as a historic accomplishment on many levels. Back in June 2010, Toy Story 3 finally hit theaters and instantly turned into a gigantic smash hit in ways that forever changed the cinematic landscape.
Toy Story 3’s Global Box Office Achievements
After over a decade since Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3 finally hit movie theaters on June 18, 2010. Starting with Finding Nemo in 2003, Pixar Animation Studios regularly delivered massively successful films in the middle of the summer. Toy Story 3, though, was a smash even by those standards. On its domestic opening weekend, it grossed $110.3 million, which dethroned Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’s $108.96 million bow as the biggest North American June launch in history. This Lee Unkrich directorial effort was also the first Pixar movie ever to crack $100+ million in its domestic opening.
Meanwhile, Toy Story 3 surpassed Shrek 2 to become the second-biggest animated movie opening ever domestically, only behind Shrek the Third’s $121-million launch. Third, though, was a one-weekend wonder that only did 2.68 times its opening weekend in its larger domestic run. Toy Story 3, meanwhile, was still rocking in its second weekend as its mighty grosses that frame secured Toy Story 3 the seventh-biggest 10-day gross for any film in history up to that point.
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Eventually, Toy Story 3 grossed $415 million domestically, the second-largest sum ever at the time for an animated feature in North America (only behind Shrek 2’s mighty $441-million haul). It also improved substantially on Toy Story 2’s $244-million gross, a signal of just how beloved these films had become over time. However, Toy Story 3’s biggest box office accomplishments were arguably felt worldwide. On the global box office stage, this Pixar feature made history that would seem commonplace today.
The Global Box Office Highs of Toy Story 3
As of this writing, 56 different movies have cracked $1+ billion worldwide. What once was just the domain of James Cameron’s directorial efforts is now a box office threshold that multiple motion pictures cross in a single year. As late as June 2010, though, only six features had ever exceeded $1+ billion. Toy Story 3 became the seventh title to do that in August 2010, a feat that also made it the first animated feature ever to crack $1+ billion worldwide. Future $1+-billion-grossing animated titles like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Ne Zha 2 walk a path Toy Story 3 carved.
Toy Story 3 cracked $1+ billion worldwide just a few months after fellow 2010 Disney movie Alice in Wonderland exceeded that threshold. Per Box Office Mojo, Toy Story 3 ensured that Disney was the first studio in history to have multiple movies gross $1+ billion globally in a single year. By 2019, when The Lion King, Aladdin, Toy Story 4, and Avengers: Endgame (among many other 2019 Mouse House projects) all exceeded $1+ billion in the same year, this would become commonplace.
However, Toy Story 3’s box office achievements in 2010 heralded a new box office era for Disney, also heralding the studio’s utter box office dominance in the ensuing decade. Years later, when adjusted for inflation, Toy Story 3’s domestic gross still stands as the 65th-biggest in the history of all cinema. It’s a fitting accomplishment for a movie whose box office antics in summer 2010 overhauled expectations for how big animated features could go at the global and domestic box office. Though Toy Story 3 has now been dethroned as Pixar’s biggest movie domestically and worldwide, its box office achievements still stand as staggeringly impressive.
Toy Story 3 is now streaming on Disney+.
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