Finding Dory Passes Captain America: Civil War As Highest Grossing Domestic Movie Of 2016 So Far

Finding Dory has now earned $408 million, passing Captain America: Civil War to become the top-grossing movie of the year at the domestic box office.

That said, both Captain America and Zootopia remain way ahead of Dory worldwide, as the Finding Nemo sequel has earned just a little bit over $200 million in the international market, bringing its global total to less than $700 million, as opposed to the $1 billion-plus earned by Civil War.

Finding Dory earned an estimated $136,183,170 in its opening weekend, more than $100 million more than Central Intelligence, the second-highest-grossing movie of the week. That's bigger than the $122 million earned by Shrek the Third's opening, making it the biggest opening weekend ever for an animated film.

$136 million gave it the third-highest-grossing opening weekend of 2016, behind Captain America: Civil War and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice but ahead of Deadpool.

The unexpectedly-huge opening for The Secret Life of Pets this weekend coupled with the huge performance of Dory will likely be taken as a resurgence for big-budget animated movies, which lagged a bit last year without a Pixar movie in the theaters (and then The Good Dinosaur, originally planned for release in 2015, came out this year with little fanfare).

Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton, who returns for the sequel, is likely breathing a sigh of relief at these numbers; his last job as a director was John Carter, which lost Disney around $200 million in spite of building a pretty solid following among audiences who saw it.

Currently, Disney holds four of the year's top five spots at the domestic box office with Finding Dory, Civil War, Zootopia, and The Jungle Book. They've also got a stake in Fox's Deadpool, since that's a Marvel property, meaning that they're making money off of all five of the biggest hits of the year domestically.