Box Office: ‘Toy Story 5’ Eyes Record $150 Million-Plus Opening Weekend
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- Toy Story 5 is targeting a $145-150M domestic opening from 4,400 North American theaters, with some industry watchers forecasting as high as $160-175M on the strength of sterling reviews and franchise goodwill.
- A debut in that range would surpass Toy Story 4's $120M and Toy Story 3's $110M openings to become the largest start in the 31-year-old franchise, and would top 2025's current biggest domestic debut, Universal's Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($131.7M).
- Overseas, the Pixar film is expected to open to $135M+ for a global debut above $275M, carrying a $250M production budget not including global marketing.
- Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, and Joan Cusack reprise their voice roles as Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and Jessie; Andrew Stanton directs, and Taylor Swift wrote the new song 'I Knew It, I Knew You' for the soundtrack.
- The plot — toys confronting kids who prefer screens over action figures, with owner Bonnie becoming addicted to a kiddie smart tablet called Lilypad — is a notably meta premise for a five-film, three-decade-old franchise.
- The Toy Story property has generated $3B+ worldwide across five theatrical films, plus more than $1B annually in consumer products, games, and publishing, and ranks as Disney+'s most-watched film with over 2 billion hours streamed globally.
- The 2025 summer box office is pacing 13% ahead of last year but still 3.4% behind 2019, with upcoming tentpoles including Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day expected to help close that gap.
Why it matters: Disney-Pixar is betting $250M on a sequel whose meta-premise — toys losing kids to screens — directly addresses a cultural threat to theatrical family animation. A $150M+ opening would validate the sequel strategy behind Inside Out 2 ($1.6B) and Zootopia 2 ($1.8B) and help close a summer box office gap still 3.4% behind 2019.
