It took 16 weeks, but the Disney/Pixar animated feature “Finding Dory” has dog-paddled past the 1 billion dollar box office mark at the worldwide box office. That’s a combined $484.8M domestic and $516.7M at the global box office. Dory joins “Toy Story 3” in Pixar’s billion-dollar club. For Disney, its the fourth billion-dollar movie released in the last 12 months. This also moves Dory into the 5th slot among all animated films.
In the days before VCRs and DVD players, Disney used to make a habit of re-releasing films, so that a new generation of fans could bring their own children to the movies they enjoyed as a kid. Now that everyone can own a DVD or just stream it from Netflix, a sequel, offered 13 years later, like “Finding Dory” was, serves as the same nostalgic moment.
Disney was pretty strategic in the international relase of “Finding Dory.” It held off on markets like Japan and China to give it a good week in those markets. The final markets, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland put it over the top. There will be a few million more added to its current total of $1,001.5M, but I don’t anticipate it catching Disney’s “Frozen” or Pixar’s “Toy Story 3.”
Up next for Pixar is “Cars 3” on June 16, 2017 directed by Brian Fee. We don’t know much about the story yet, but it’s sure to be another decent merchandise generator for Disney. I’m hopeful the Pixar brain trust still has a few tricks up its sleeve in terms of making something original. After that is “Coco” in November 2017, which is an original Pixar concept based on the Day of the Dead traditional Mexico holiday. Lee Unkrich is directing and Adrian Molina has joined to co-direct. Then we’re back to two sequels – “Toy Story 4” (June 2018) and the much anticipated “The Incredibles 2” (June 2019) – and back on the one film per year schedule. There are more films in production, but their tiles have yet to be divulged.