The Records Behind The Toy Story Franchise Will Blow Your Mind!
Woody and Buzz are back, and America showed up in a big way. Toy Story 5 opened over the weekend with a franchise-best $160 million domestically and $152 million internationally for a worldwide debut of $312 million, making it the biggest opening weekend of 2026. It surpassed the previous franchise record of $120 million set by Toy Story 4 in 2019. Audiences gave it an "A" CinemaScore, suggesting it will keep earning for weeks. The fifth installment, directed by Pixar veteran Andrew Stanton, features a new Taylor Swift song called "I Knew It, I Knew You" that debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and returns Tom Hanks as Woody and Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear. The toys are now competing for attention as Bonnie gets hooked on a new tablet — a premise every parent on earth will recognize.
But the records behind Toy Story go far deeper than this weekend's numbers. The original 1995 film holds the Guinness World Records title for first feature-length computer-animated movie and first Pixar film, with animators rendering 114,240 frames each taking between 45 minutes and 30 hours to produce. Toy Story 3 in 2010 became the first animated film ever to gross $1 billion. The franchise has now collectively grossed more than $3 billion before this weekend's haul. Tom Hanks holds the most Golden Globe awards won by an individual with eight, and co-star Bonnie Hunt is the highest-grossing actress at the global box office in supporting roles with over $9 billion. Even the soundtrack is record-breaking: Taylor Swift holds over 90 Guinness World Records, including the first music tour to gross $1 billion. Thirty-one years after it began, the Toy Story franchise is somehow still making history.
