Audiences are still enjoying Toy Story 3 in theaters, even though the film was released over 2 months ago in many parts of the world. In the U.S. and Canada, Disney and Pixar decided to expand the amount of theaters playing the film to over 1500 (an increase of about 900) to take advantage of the holiday weekend. Think of it as a last hurrah before the film will leave theaters behind in favor of DVD and Blu-ray players. The theater expansion predictably benefited the third part of the Toy Story franchise, with a 3-day weekend box office gross of $1.94 million (92% increase over the same period last week). The box office take over the 4-day holiday weekend was $2.7 million, bringing its total North American tally to $408.89 million (#9 all time).
Worldwide, Toy Story 3 broke several more records. Over this past weekend, it brought its worldwide gross to a staggering $1.03 billion, enough to pass Alice in Wonderland, which was also released this year. This gave Toy Story 3 the title of the biggest film in the world for 2010, in addition to being crowned the fifth biggest film of all time.
Like North America, the U.K. has also brought in a large portion of the film’s total worldwide gross. This weekend in the U.K., Toy Story 3 raised its box office total to about £70.13 million (about 107 million in U.S. dollars), passing Mamma Mia! and Titanic to become the second highest-grossing film of all time in the country. That sure is nothing to scoff at! The biggest film in the U.K., for those wondering, is Avatar with about £93.4 million (and taking in more with its recent re-release).
Toy Story 3 is winding down its box office run, so time is running out if you planned on checking it out in theaters again!
Sources: Box Office Mojo, BBC News