Despite Sequel Fatigue, Toy Story 4 Broke the Global Box Office Record For an Animated Film

Over two decades since the first Toy Story film hit theaters, the beloved Disney-Pixar animated franchise continues to break records.

Toy Story 4 — the highly-anticipated fourth installment in the story about Woody, Buzz, Bo Peep, and the rest of Andy's toys — smashed the global box office record for an animated movie. Since opening worldwide on June 20, the film starring Tom Hanks, Keanu Reeves, Christina Hendricks, and more raked in $238 million. Unfortunately, despite performing well in Europe, Latin America, and the UK (where it set a record by opening with $15 million), Toy Story 4 failed to deliver the ticket sales expected of the film in the US.

So far, the movie has pulled in $118 million at the domestic box office, compared to the $140 million it was expected to. That places it as the fourth-biggest US opening for an animated movie, coming in behind last year's Incredibles 2, 2016's Finding Dory, and 2007's Shrek the Third. Many enthusiastic predictions figured Toy Story 4 would overtake the Incredibles sequel's $182 million American box office bow, but so far it seems the ticket sales are still moving slowly even though the Josh Cooley-directed film currently has a 98 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Could this mean that US audiences are experiencing a serious case of sequel fatigue? Like Toy Story 4, other additions to longstanding movie studio franchises this Summer have underperformed, like Men in Black: International and X-Men: Dark Phoenix. There still hasn't been any official word about whether Toy Story is getting another sequel or not, but let's hope Pixar decides to let this franchise end for good given how perfectly the fourth film wraps everything up.