Inside Out 2, the biggest summer movie, finally has a Disney+ premiere date. The sequel to the hit 2015 animated film Inside Out became the breakout hit of the summer with the second-biggest opening weekend of 2024 with $155 million. It is currently the highest-grossing film of the year, with $652 million domestic and $1.67 billion worldwide. Inside Out 2 has also become the highest-grossing animated movie of all time (unadjusted for inflation), and after four months in theaters, it is finally coming to Disney+.
Variety reports that Inside Out 2 will arrive on Disney+ on September 25, 2024. The movie hit PVOD on August 20, 2024, and recently became available on physical media on September 10, 2024. The film’s arrival on Disney+ is highly anticipated, as it means the hit movie of the summer will be available to more families. The streaming date for Inside Out 2 arrives 104 days after the movie hits theaters on June 19, 2024.
Inside Out 2 Revitalized Pixar and Disney
The arrival of Inside Out 2 on Disney+ four months after its theatrical release shows how much has changed for Disney in the past few years. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Pixar films were some of the biggest casualties, as Disney sent Soul, Luca, and Turning Red straight to the streaming platform. Unlike other Disney films like Black Widow or Raya and the Last Dragon, which were put behind a $30 paywall at first, the Pixar films were put onto the service for no additional charge. This not only left many Pixar employees not feeling undervalued, but also later impacted how audiences viewed Pixar movies.
Lightyear, the studio’s first theatrical film in three years, bombed at the box office. Elemental originally got off to a bad start, having the worst opening weekend of any Pixar film. However, Elemental did recover and became a sleeper hit, although the box office numbers were a far cry from other original Pixar films like WALL-E, Up, and Coco. Before Inside Out 2, many wondered if the Pixar brand had been hurt by former Disney CEO Bob Chapek’s decision to prioritize Disney+ streaming over theatrical releases. The once mighty animation studio that once could be counted on to draw audiences out to theaters for original ideas found themselves in a position where their movies were deemed “wait for streaming.”
Inside Out 2 was a big rebound for the Pixar image and Disney’s, as they were also coming off a terrible 2023. It also shows how Disney is now starting to hold off on releasing their films on streaming, as leaving them in theaters affords them a longer theatrical window. Inside Out 2 was not only the number 1 movie at the box office for three weeks in a row, but also in the domestic top ten for eleven weeks. While other studios, like Warner Bros. and Universal, have sent some of their films straight to PVOD after just a month of release, Disney is sticking to the classic model of keeping a movie in theaters longer and making its home video and streaming release a bigger deal.