Zootopia 2’s Record Breaking Opening Weekend!

Zootopia 2’s Record Breaking Opening Weekend!

Zootopia 2 is the latest Disney animated movie to hit theaters. This past week the film opened in theaters and had quite a great opening weekend that didn’t just make a lot of money but also broke a number of records. Let’s talk about it!

The Numbers: If you didn’t know Zootopia 2’s opening weekend was pretty incredible. This movie opened on a Wednesday which means we got two different opening weekends for this movie. For the 5-Day weekend it made $156 million and $97 million for the 3-Day. As a point of reference last November, Moana 2 had great numbers. That movie opened to $139 million for the 3-day and $225 million for the 5-day. The fact that the numbers were tracking to open lower isn’t too surprising because that’s what the film was tracking prior to release. But where things get interesting is when you look at the film’s global opening. The film’s global opening was $559.5 million, the biggest ever for an animated movie. The film had a great opening weekend domestically but internationally it knocked it out of the park and made over $500 million in its first five days of release.  

Records Broken

• Biggest Animated Global Opening (beating Ne Zha 2’s $431 million)
• 4th Biggest Global Opening (behind Avengers Endgame ($1.2 billion), Avengers: Infinity War ($640 million), and Spider-Man: No Way Home ($600.5 million)
• Highest Global Sequel Opening since 2021 (record previously broken by Spider-Man: No Way Home)
• Biggest opening weekend increase from original to sequel for any animated franchise (239% increase).
• 2nd Biggest Domestic Opening of 2025 (behind A Minecraft Movie with $167 million)

My Thoughts: There’s more records that the film broke but these are the big and most interesting ones. Wow, I expected that this movie would be a hit. I knew it was going to make $1 billion but these numbers are insane. The fact that this movie had the biggest global opening behind three movies that either made over $2 billion or close to $2 billion. This movie is going to be a big hit and will make a whole lot of money. Given there’s not much competition until mid-December, this movie is going to continue to bring in money because it’s the only family movie for people to go see. It also helps that the movie’s word of mouth is very strong so people are going to want to go back and see it multiple times. By Christmas we’ll have another $1 billion animated movie and then shortly after that Avatar: Fire and Ash will have made $1 billion so late 2025, early 2026 is going to be great in terms of box office. Yah, I don’t really have too many theories as to why this movie overperformed. Because domestically it’s doing about what I would’ve expected it to. Its domestic opening was lower than what Moana 2 opened to but not in a way that’s disappointing. The theories as to why it overperformed I think you have to look at the international numbers. Since I’m not part of the international audience I don’t know why it overperformed. Especially in China where it had a $200 million opening in China, the second biggest ever behind Avengers Endgame. I think maybe why this film did so well in China is because 2025 is the year of the snake, and so maybe there’s some connection there as to why it’s box office is fantastic. Overall, I’m not surprised that Zootopia 2 was a hit, I’m surprised that it’s as big of a hit as it is just based on its opening weekend. I don’t know if a third film has been announced but given these numbers, I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few days it’s announced a third film is in development.