Queen Elsa reigned supreme as Frozen II enjoyed the biggest global opening ever for an animated movie, The Numbers is reporting. With a worldwide premiere of $350 million, it beat the record set by Toy Story 4 earlier this year by more than $100 million. Additionally, Frozen II also gave Disney Feature Animation their first $100 million+ opening in the states, earning $127 million. It’s worth noting that the biggest Disney Feature Animation opening prior to this weekend was Zootopia back in 2016 with $75 million.
Frozen II’s stateside take also gave it the third biggest debut for an animated feature ever, behind only Finding Dory ($130 million) and Incredibles 2 ($180 million), and both of those films had the benefit of opening during the summer when kids are off from school on Fridays. And there’s still a slight chance that Anna and Elsa could eclipse Dory once actuals come in tomorrow afternoon.
What went right here? First and foremost, Disney ran a great marketing campaign, promoting Frozen II has an epic event film with a teaser which launched in February. And, of course, there was very little chance that a sequel to Frozen wasn’t going to be a hit, given that it’s still the biggest animated movie ever at $1.2 billion worldwide (we won’t count the new Lion King). Though it didn’t score quite as high with critics as the original (with some taking issue with the sequel’s abundant use of supernatural elements), Frozen II was still warmly received for the most part when it came to reviews, and the CinemaScore is also quite favorable at “A-” vs. the “A+” the first movie got.
Making things even more promising for Frozen II is that it’s all but guaranteed to lead the box office for the next two weekends. Wednesday kicks off the five-day Thanksgiving holiday, which is almost always generous to Disney, and the following week brings Playmobil: The Movie, which so far at least has been tracking very poorly.
Final figures are due tomorrow.