Key Points
- Toy Story 5 opened to $160 million domestically, the franchise's biggest debut.
- It posted 2026's largest domestic opening and a $312 million global start.
- The $250 million film scored 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and an "A" CinemaScore.
- It ranks as the second-largest animated opening ever, behind Incredibles 2.
An opening day that came up just short of the animated single-day record turned into a weekend that rewrote the franchise's record book. Toy Story 5 earned $160 million across 4,425 North American theaters in its debut, the largest opening in Toy Story history and the biggest domestic start of 2026 so far.
The numbers
The $160 million haul cleared the previous franchise high — Toy Story 4's $120 million in 2019 — and passed Universal's Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($131.7 million) for the year's top domestic opening. Add $152 million overseas and the global tally hits $312 million in three days, against a reported $250 million production budget. The reviews backed the turnout: 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and an "A" CinemaScore from opening audiences. Only one animated film has ever opened bigger domestically — Incredibles 2, at $182.7 million in 2018.
What the number signals
For all the talk of a softening theatrical business, the right intellectual property still moves families to the multiplex at scale, and Disney and Pixar have few assets safer than Woody and Buzz. Andrew Stanton, a Pixar veteran who directed WALL-E and Finding Nemo, takes the franchise back to a recognizably domestic setup: the toys contend with Bonnie's new obsession, a frog-shaped kiddie tablet named Lilypad voiced by Greta Lee. It is a knowing premise for a studio releasing a fifth installment into a market full of screens competing for the same young attention — and the opening number suggests the bet paid off.
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