‘Lightyear’ To Blast Off With $135M WW As Summer Box Office Rebound Continues

deadline.com:

Pixar, after seeing its movies sidelined to Disney+ during the pandemic, returns to the big screen this weekend with Lightyear, the origin story of the spaceman toy which little Andy plays with in the Toy Story movies.Comps here are Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which is the biggest family movie to open during the pandemic with $72M stateside.

In addition, since Lightyear is considered a spinoff, not a sequel to the Toy Story franchise, its projections are being held down by that classification.

Spinoff movies like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them ($74.4M) are numerically in their own box office subset, typically opening lower than direct IP sequels, so that’s what’s keeping Lightyear below a $100M U.S.

start at this point in time. The last Toy Story, Toy Story 4, opened in June 2019 to $120.9M. If Lightyear overperforms, like Universal/Amblin’s Jurassic World Dominion did last weekend (beating its original projection by $20M with a $145M U.S./Canada start), it’s because of great word of mouth, thus triggering walk-up business.