Soul, June 26 -- What happened last Tuesday in American theaters was not supposed to happen on a Tuesday. Toy Story 5, now six days into its theatrical run, posted $23.7 million on June 24, the biggest single day in domestic cinema so far in 2026, surpassing a record set by Illumination's Super Mario Galaxy Movie in February, and crossed $200 million in the process. For Pixar, a studio that spent four years watching its films land on Disney+ before families could debate whether to buy a ticket, the number matters less than the day it landed on.

whether Inside Out 2 was a sequel anomaly or the beginning of something the studio can sustain.

Andrew Stanton, directing his first Pixar feature in over a decade, built the film around a premise...