‘Inside Out 2’ Surpasses ‘The Lion King’ Remake, Becomes Highest-Grossing Animated Feature Of All Time

Disney-Pixar’s Inside Out 2 has surpassed The Lion King 2019 remake to become the highest-grossing animated feature of all time.

This weekend, the Kelsey Mann-directed IO2 grossed $9.8 million globally ($2.7m in the U.S. and $7.1m abroad) for a grand total of $1.66 billion, pushing it past the $1.65 billion global take of The Lion King.

Many media sources had erroneously reported back in July that Inside Out 2 had become the highest-grossing animated film of all-time after it topped the $1.45 billion gross of Frozen 2, because they don’t consider cg animation to be animation, even though all three of the films under discussion were created using the same cg techniques. The Walt Disney Company itself also claims falsely that The Lion King remake is not an animated film.

Others have pointed out that The Lion King remake contains a single shot of live action film, which disqualifies the film from consideration, however Walt Disney’s 1937 feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs contains two live-action shots, and not a single person has made the argument in the last 87 years that that it is not a fully-animated film.

In any case, it is now without doubt that Inside Out 2 is the highest-grossing animated feature of all time, a fact worth celebrating and an affirmation of the power of animation in the global marketplace. The film is also the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time globally, as well as the current highest-grossing film of 2024, both domestically and globally.