By Janet H. Cho

Walt Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5 is expected to become the biggest domestic movie premiere of the year this weekend, with estimates for ticket sales of $150 million to $175 million.

That would make Toy Story 5 the biggest debut of the movies in the beloved Toy Story franchise, with fans spread across ages and generations, says Paul Dergarabedian, Rentrak's head of marketplace trends.

It's also among the most profitable franchises, with more than $3.03 billion in worldwide box office totals from the four previous movies, unadjusted for inflation.

The animated adventure reunites the toys Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), and Jessie (Joan Cusack) as they face competition from a new electronic toy called Lilypad. Conan O'Brien joins the cast as a potty-training toy called Smarty Pants.

The film is opening across more than 4,200 theaters in North America and on more than 1,600 IMAX screens worldwide, including in China, a critical movie market.

Taylor Swift wrote a new song for the film, "I Knew It, I Knew You," saying on social media that "I've always dreamed of getting to write for these characters who I've adored since I was a 5 year old kid watching the first Toy Story movie. I fell instantly in love with Toy Story 5 when I was lucky enough to see it in its early stages, and I wrote this song as soon as I got home from the screening. Sometimes you just know, right?"

Adam Aron, CEO of the movie theater company AMC Entertainment, said after attending the movie's Los Angeles world premiere last week and seeing Swift perform the song in person, that "Mark my words, Toy Story 5 will be a giant phenomenal smash hit. A truly charming triumph."

Eric Handler, Roth's senior media and entertainment analyst, said that $150 million projection isn't too high considering that "reviews have been overwhelmingly positive," many people will be off for the Juneteeth holiday, and Disney has been promoting the movie heavily across ABC, its cable networks, and Disney+ streaming platform.

For Hollywood, summer movie ticket sales from May 1 through June 14 are $1.55 billion, up 11.2% from the same span in 2025, and only 3.2% below the same period in 2019.

Although studios had their biggest postpandemic summer movie season in 2023, with more than $4 billion in domestic ticket sales powered by Warner Bros.' Barbie and Universal Pictures' Oppenheimer, this summer could outgross that by as much as $200 million, with the potential to hit $4.2 billion, Dergarabedian said.

More than 40 films are set to open in more than 2,000 theaters this summer, compared with 32 films in the summer of 2023, and 42 films in the summer of 2019. Rentrak said that creates the potential for a $10 billion year at the domestic box office, compared with last year's $9.05 billion.

"This is poised to be the biggest overall weekend of the year thus far," Dergarabedian noted, with Toy Story 5 the second film to open to over $100 million this year if estimates hold.

The year has been "on an absolute roll," Dergarabedian said. "So many films have enjoyed long term playability and built their box office over time rather than relying on a $100 million plus opening weekend," Dergarabedian told Barron's. " Toy Story 5 of course will have both, it'll have a huge opening weekend and long-term playability."

Box office expectations weren't always as critical as they are today. The first Toy Story raked in $29.1 million its opening weekend in November 1995, but went on to sell more than $363 million worldwide, according to Rentrak.

Toy Story 2 opened with $80.5 million domestically in November 1999, and eventually sold $487.1 million worldwide, according to BoxOfficeMojo.

Toy Story 3 sold $110.3 million its first weekend in June 2010, and Toy Story 4 sold $120.9 million its first weekend in July 2019. Both films eventually grossed more than $1.07 billion worldwide, according to Rentrak.

Considering that many of those totals are from lower-priced children's tickets, Dergarabedian calls the $3 billion in cumulative worldwide box office sales "incredibly impressive and a testament to the brilliance of the creative teams at Pixar." He said that doesn't include the hundreds of millions of dollars in product tie-ins, toys, merchandise, and other ancillary revenue streams.

Toy Story 5 is also the first film in the franchise with a "PG" rating (previous films were rated "G"), which was the most popular movie rating by dollar amount domestically over the past two years. PG-rated films generated $3.18 billion in 2024, and the highest-grossing movie was Disney's PG-rated Inside Out 2. PG-rated films generated $2.97 billion in 2025, with Warner Bros.' PG-rated A Minecraft Movie grossing the most, according to Rentrak.

"There was a time when a 'PG' rating may have scared off some parents thinking that a movie with that rating might be a little too edgy for their kids," he said. But now PG is "the absolute go-to rating for families and kids who want to see a movie that's fun and appropriate for the youngest kids, but also has enough edginess and perhaps inside humor to entertain the parents or the older moviegoer."

Although there's no doubt that Taylor Swift's support will fuel a powerful opening weekend, and having a female lead will draw more younger women into the theater, Hollywood will be paying attention to how Toy Story 5 performs going forward, said Stephen Galloway, dean of the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and former executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter.

"This is going to be a canary in the coal mine about whether there's 'franchise fatigue'" among moviegoers, whether the movie resonates with international audiences, especially in China, and whether it will support sales of related merchandise, he told Barron's.

Galloway says that expectations of what makes a movie successful have changed. Whereas Pixar's Elemental, which sold $496.4 million worldwide, might have been considered successful before, studios now aspire for box office figures like Pixar's Inside Out 2, which sold $1.7 billion worldwide.

In contrast, Disney's Star Wars: Mandalorian and Grogu has grossed only $165.1 million in domestic box office sales over the past four weeks, and Amazon MGM's Masters of the Universe has sold only $46.7 million over the past two weeks.

Galloway says he has seen estimates that Toy Story 5 will sell between $140 million to $170 million this weekend, which he said aren't really comparable to the previous films' box office sales because they're not adjusted for inflation. They also don't take into account that movie ticket prices have increased, and more people are seeing films on IMAX or other large-screen premium formats, which generate more revenue but don't mean that more people saw the movie.

"In America, movies are measured in terms of box office numbers, but in France, they're measured by ticket sales, which are actually a much better measure," he said.

Write to Janet H. Cho at janet.cho@dowjones.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 18, 2026 14:04 ET (18:04 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.