Which director has the highest-grossing first movie?
Watching high-level sport in a packed pub is always a somewhat grating experience. To see a bunch of amateurs who have barely kicked, thrown or even dodged a ball since their school days offer advice and hefty critique to some of the finest professionals of the respective game is more than irritating. The same can be said for Hollywood.
It is incredibly easy to sit back and critique a movie for not hitting the mark you decided it needed to hit. Art is subjective, after all, so ascertaining what is and isn’t a good movie and whether those connected with the production have succeeded or failed is a difficult task to complete with perfect efficacy. However, one sure-fire way to measure every movie is by its box office takings.
Though many would argue that artistic merit does not always equate to high earnings and that some of the best-selling movies of all time are seemingly aimed so squarely at the middle of the road that they end up ith white paint on their movie posters, it is hard to deny that as a metric it is a helpful one to denote whether a picture is popular or not.
Since cinema began to take hold of its commercial power, these takings have not only been a helpful trick but also the main reason movies get made in the first place and with whom they are made. Usually, this means that the most important roles on the production go to seasoned professionals or trending stars in a bid to guarantee more seats before the film is even released.
But that doesn’t mean you always need to have big names to sell a movie, and Kelsey Mann proved that when he took on the reins for animated hit Inside Out 2, becoming the most successful debut feature film director of all time in the process. Mann was certainly experienced, having worked on storyboards and productions for a range of Pixar hits since 2013’s Monsters University, including Luca and Lightyear, but his debut in the most important chair on set proved to be a big hit.
Inside Out 2 delivered in a number of ways, not only by becoming a high-grossing hit across the board, but also earned a nomination for the Academy Award for ‘Best Animated Feature’.
How did Inside Out 2 perform at the box office?
There can be no denying it, Inside Out 2 was a mega hit for Pixar and picking up the story where the original Inside Out left off, in the brain of Riley Andersen as she approaches her teen years with trepidation and a whole new host of emotions vying for the spotlight. The movie gathered up plaudits for its expert balance between child-friendly comedy and undeniable pathos.
The popularity of the movie can be seen, most importantly, in the box office takings. With a healthy budget of $200million there might have been some worries that Inside Out 2 would not match up to the first movie. But it triumphed, notching up $1.7billion in takings, making it the highest-grossing movie for any debut director ever. Perhaps its finest mark, though, is not this record but the fact that it appears to be noted as one of the best Pixar movies ever made.
