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While once seen as a major champion for fresh storytelling, Pixar’s run with original movies in the last few years hasn’t quite matched its legacy. The animation studio has produced hit sequels, including Pete Docter‘s Inside Out 2 and Josh Cooley’s Toy Story 4, but Dan Scanlon’s Onward, Enrico Casarosa’s Luca, Domee Shi’s Turning Red, and Docter’s Soul all saw their releases hamstrung by the COVID-19 pandemic; Peter Sohn’s Elemental needed an extended period to grow its box office numbers; and Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, and Adrian Molina’s Elio straight-up underperformed. Because of this recent history, there were a lot of question marks surrounding the release of Daniel Chong’s Hoppers – but the audience has responded with exclamation marks.
The new animal-centric animated feature dominated the box office this past weekend with a strong debut – though what’s good for Hoppers turned out to be not so great for Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Bride! and Kevin Williamson’s Scream 7. You can scope out the full domestic Top 10 for the weekend below, and join me after for analysis.
|
TITLE |
WEEKEND GROSS |
DOMESTIC GROSS |
LW |
THTRS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1. Hoppers* |
$46,000,000 |
$46,000,000 |
N/A |
4,000 |
|
2. Scream 7 |
$17,300,000 |
$93,374,160 |
1 |
3,540 |
|
3. The Bride* |
$7,260,000 |
$7,260,000 |
N/A |
3,304 |
|
4. GOAT |
$6,600,000 |
$83,803,047 |
2 |
3,303 |
|
5. Wuthering Heights |
$3,750,000 |
$78,764,775 |
3 |
2,512 |
|
6. Crime 101 |
$2,066,759 |
$33,640,551 |
6 |
1,910 |
|
7. Send Help |
$1,600,000 |
$62,735,847 |
8 |
1,650 |
|
8. I Can Only Imagine 2 |
$1,525,000 |
$16,205,678 |
7 |
1,834 |
|
9. EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert |
$1,523,800 |
$10,948,430 |
5 |
1,965 |
|
10. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Infinity Castle |
$1,300,000 |
$135,819,077 |
N/A |
832 |
Hoppers Arrives As Pixar’s Best Original Movie At The Box Office Since 2017
In 2024, Pixar had one of the biggest box office successes of the year with the release of Inside Out 2, and the animation studio has now stuck gold in the early months of 2026 with Hoppers.
According to Box Office Mojo, the new movie made $46 million in its debut domestically, and while that’s not exactly “all-time” money when discussing Pixar on the big screen, it’s definitely a big win as an original title. In fact, one needs to go back all the way to 2017 and the arrival of Lee Unkrich’s Coco to find the last non-franchise title from the studio that made that much money in its first three days of domestic release.
The success comes after the film managed to get some extremely positive buzz in the days before release (critics really liked to use the word “best” in writing about Hoppers), and the picture gets even rosier when one factors in the performance abroad. The movie made $42 million overseas to go along with the ticket sales in the United States and Canada, which brings its total gross to date up to $88 million.
This success comes at a time when things are going well for animation on the big screen: Byron Howard and Jared Bush’s Zootopia 2 successfully managed to claim the title of biggest film of 2025 domestically last month, and Tyree Dillihay’s GOAT has made $146.3 million so far worldwide after arriving in theaters in the middle of February. Audiences of all ages are clearly digging the material that animation studios are putting out these days, and the positive word of mouth should only help Hoppers in the weeks to come.
To go along with all of the raves from professional movie writers, the new Pixar movie has gotten an extremely warm welcome from audiences as well, as illustrated by the “A” grade returned from CinemaScore surveys. Looking at the 2026 movie release schedule, the film also doesn’t seem to have any titles targeting its core demographic until Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie arrives in early April, so I expect there’s a good chance it stays in at least the Top 3 through the end of the month.
The Bride! Stumbles Out Of The Gate With A Tough Third Place Finish In Its Opening Weekend
Unfortunately, while things are going very well for Hoppers at the box office, things did not go as swimmingly for The Bride! In the words of Christian Bale, Maggie Gyllenhaal was given the freedom to take a big swing with her take on the Bride of Frankenstein story, but audiences, it seems, weren’t quite ready for her vision. The movie got word-of-mouth full of extremes going into its wide release (a mix of five star and zero star reactions), and it only managed to take third place in its debut.
Featuring current Oscar-nominee Jessie Buckley in the titular role, The Bride! managed to only bring in $7.3 million over the last three days, and it made slightly less than that abroad – leading to a global total of just $13.6 million in its opening weekend. Considering this is a title with a reported budget in the range of $90 million, according to Variety, it’s definitely not the start that anyone was hoping for.
Based on reactions so far, it doesn’t look like the movie is going to be growing legs in the weeks ahead either, which means it appears as though we will end up looking at the audacious horror/crime feature as an early 2026 bomb.
Scream 7 Suffers A Massive Fall After Its Record Breaking Start
In last week’s box office column, I noted that I would be keeping an eye on the legs shown by Scream 7. The film had a massive opening (one that registered as the biggest in the history of the franchise), but I wondered if the movie potentially had some troubled waters ahead due to both critical and audience reception: the sequel earned the worst reviews of any title in the series and the lowest CinemaScore grade (tied with Wes Craven’s Scream 4). I wondered if the lacking positive word of mouth would end up hurting its ticket sales in its second week… and it turns out I was right to prep for a massive drop.
While Scream 2 was able to still land in second place and make $17.1 million, that figure is a shocking 72 percent fall weekend-to-weekend (to provide context for those who don’t regularly track box office, “bad” is usually a figure in the high 50s, so this is particularly rough). To date, the movie has now made $93.4 million domestically, which is enough for fourth place in the history of the franchise in the market (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s Scream VI holds the top spot having made $108.4 million).
So what happened here? It’s not particularly difficult to decipher. The people who decided that they were going to see Scream 7 no matter what flocked to their local theaters last week when the movie first arrived in theaters – and because this is a major horror franchise, that was a considerable crowd. Unfortunately, those folks were evidently not too impressed with what they witnessed, and didn’t make a point of telling their friends and family that they should check it out. Simultaneously, those who were on the fence about purchasing a ticket ultimately decided against it. The end result is a serious and immediate decrease in ticket sales, and crowds are only going to get thinner and thinner as we get deeper into March 2026.
Despite this major drop, one expects that Scream 7’s performance overall should mean that this will not be the end of the long-running meta horror franchise. Globally, the film has made $149.5 million, which is plenty when one compares it to the production’s $45 million budget (per Deadline).
Looking ahead on the movie release schedule, next week will feature some new competition for the current Top 10 with fresh titles including Vanessa Caswill’s Reminders Of Him (a new Colleen Hoover adaptation), Ian Tuason’s sound-driven horror feature undertone, and Amy Wang’s Mean Girls-meets-The Substance body horror comedy Slanted. Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to see how things shake out for the weekend.
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