The Incredibles 2 Smashes The Record For the Biggest Animated Opening Weekend in Cinema History

Of all the super-feats pulled off by Pixar’s First Family of daring do-gooders, this one might be the most amazing: The Incredibles 2 made an astounding $180 million at the U.S. box office in its opening weekend, demolishing the previous record to become the highest grossing animated film debut of all time.

It truly wasn’t even a contest, either. The previous record was also held by Pixar, naturally, but 2016’s Finding Dory made what now seems like a paltry figure of $135 million in its opening frame. The fact that Incredibles 2 could somehow up that number by more than 33% speaks both to the massive appeal of superhero movies in general and to how fondly remembered Brad Bird’s 2004 original still is. Truly, it’s an incredible novelty to be able to say that the biggest animated movie of all time stars Craig T. Nelson, is it not?

Not to be outdone, the $180 million opening was also the biggest PG-rated opening of all time, narrowly surpassing Disney’s Beauty and the Beast from last year. The film likely happened to benefit from the fact that there hasn’t been a major animated film opening since March, but it was also buoyed by strong critical and audience reactions—you can read Paste’s own glowing review right here.

As in the original, the sequel is directed by Brad Bird and re-teams Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl with super-kids Dash, Violet and scene-stealing baby Jack-Jack. It took in an additional $51.5 million overseas, bringing its global cume to a gaudy $231.5 million already. Expect this one to break some additional records before all is said and done. Also? Expect more from The Incredibles universe in the future, and don’t expect it to take 14 years to get produced this time.