Finding Dory Sets Opening Weekend Record For Animated Film

Disney/Pixar’s latest sequel Finding Dory not only managed to out-draw Finding Nemo in its first week at the domestic box office, but to break the all-time record for the biggest opening by an animated movie.

Finding Dory earned an estimated $136,183,170 this weekend, more than $100 million more than Central Intelligence, the second-highest-grossing movie of the week. That’s a little shy of the massive $140 million it was projected to do as of yesterday, but still bigger than the $122 million earned by Shrek the Third‘s opening.

The film, almost universally beloved by critics, is well on the way to being one of the year’s top-grossing films.

$136 million gives 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.

It also makes the film one of the ten highest-grossing films of 2016 immediately: Angry Birds, currently the year’s eighth-highest-grossing movie of the year, has earned only $101 million at the North American box office to date.

Currently in its third week of release, X-Men: Apocalypse has earned $140 million.

On Friday, Finding Dory made an estimated $55 million, beating out the single-day record from Shrek the Third, $47 million.

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 three of the year’s top five spots at the domestic box office with Civil War, Zootopia, and The Jungle Book. They’ve also got a stake in Fox’s Deadpool, since that’s a Marvel property. If Finding Dory ousts Batman V Superman from the top spot before something else creeps in, Disney could potentially have a financial stake in all five of the year’s top films.

Warcraft is projected to drop 74% in its second weekend, one of the biggest drops for a major release in recent history — more than Batman V Superman, but less than Fifty Shades of Grey or the 2009 Friday the 13th reboot.