Pixar’s ‘Finding Dory’ keeps on swimming past U.S. box-office records

The sequel to Pixar’s 2003 fish film Finding Nemo has made an estimated $446 million at the box office during its opening weeks, propelling the sequel past the record set by 2004’s big green ogre film by about $5 million overall. But even outside of the world of animated features, the new film is a staggering success.

Finding Dory is expected to surpass The Dark Knight Rises, which earned $448 million domestically during its release, to become the 10th-highest-grossing film in U.S. history, and has brought in nearly $722 million at the global box office. In the U.S., it’s also the highest-grossing film of this year by a healthy margin.

Plus, the film will see some bigger returns globally soon: Finding Dory has yet to premiere in some pretty big markets, including the United Kingdom, where it will debut Friday, July 29.

From the get-go, the big film about a little fish has been making big waves. Finding Dory had the highest-grossing opening weekend of any Pixar film to date. Disney, which owns the famed animation studio, is having quite a multiyear run, having captured numerous box-office records with last year’s Star Wars film. The company has already made more than $5 billion at the box office this year.

It’s not clear how many more records Finding Dory can break at this point. Still, given largely favorable reviews, the Finding Nemo sequel will continue to be a moneymaker for the film studio well into the summer. And that’s not to mention all the Blu-ray discs and schwag it’ll probably sell for the company at Christmas.