As it nears $1.7 billion in global box office grosses toward the end of its run, Disney’s Zootopia 2 could very well become the highest-grossing animated film ever in the West, if not a close second, to 2024’s Inside Out 2, the current record holder.
2025 was already a big year for animated film. China’s Ne Zha 2 achieved the highest global gross of any animated film, with $2.26 billion in total, and the country — the Eastern leader — contributed greatly to Zootopia 2 as well, with its audiences adding more than $600 million to the animal caper’s total.
Still, Zootopia 2 would be sitting at $1 billion without China’s help. Like many of the films that made it to that number after the pandemic, Zootopia 2 benefited from a long release gap since its predecessor.
Of the 10 U.S. films to reach $1 billion globally since 2020 that are either sequels or remakes, seven released more than 5 years after the prior film in their respective franchises.
Released within a year of one another, Zootopia 2, Moana 2 and Inside Out 2 all delivered substantially high grosses eight or more years after the first films, fueled in part by the nostalgia factor among since-grown fans of those films and the shelf-life extended to them on Disney+, where Moana in particular has led annual streaming charts.
The exceptions to this trend are notable for their own reasons. Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home hit theaters at the end of 2021, a fairly quick turnaround from Spider-Man: Far From Home in 2019 given COVID’s interruption, yet amassed nearly $2 billion globally, almost $800 million more than the earlier sequel.
However, as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, No Way Home featured the titular character of Disney’s Doctor Strange in a key supporting role and brought back the last two actors to play Spider-Man in supporting roles as well, granting the film major-event status while setting up a Doctor Strange sequel that would follow the next year.
As for Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third film in a franchise started by the highest-grossing film in history, hitting the billion-dollar mark was more than expected, though it hasn’t grossed much more beyond that and is close to $1.3 billion at the time of writing, a far cry from the $2.3 billion earned by the last sequel three years ago.
Likewise, Jurassic World Dominion’s performance isn’t as impressive when looking at the last four films of the Universal franchise.
Since its 2015 resurrection from the first Jurassic Park films, Jurassic World has made less money with each subsequent outing. 2025’s Jurassic World Rebirth was the first to gross under $1 billion — and did so considerably, bringing in less than $900 million.
It may still be a dependably profitable franchise, but the steady decreases don’t bode well for Jurassic World staying that way, a troubling sign as one of Universal’s more prolific properties. Fast & Furious saw similar decreases across a nearly identical timeframe, with 2023’s Fast X topping out at just over $700 million, compared with the whopping $1.5 billion Furious 7 made in 2015.
Wider gaps have also worked well for Marvel. Amid its overabundance of interconnected films, the only MCU film to make it to $1 billion after 2021’s Spider-Man is 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, which continued the stories of characters who hadn’t been seen since 2018 and 2017, respectively.
Similarly, 2022’s Doctor Strange made it past $900 million after a six-year wait from its 2016 originator, which didn’t pass $700 million, and 2023’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which arrived six years after the last film, made nearly the same amount as Vol. 2.
Disney’s 2026 slate has more long-gap sequels with the potential to validate this strategy further. Most notable is Toy Story 5, the first direct installment since 2019’s billion-dollar sequel, itself released nine years after Toy Story 3, which also made $1 billion.
There is also the first sequel to 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada, though Freaky Friday’s 22-year follow-up in 2025 didn’t improve upon the 2003 film’s gross at all. Star Wars will return as well for the first time since 2019 as a film version of what was supposed to be The Mandalorian’s fourth season, the same pattern undertaken by Moana 2’s recut of a planned Disney+ series.
That said, a live-action Moana remake set for this summer, less than two years after Moana 2’s November 2024 release, may counter the long-gap model if it resonates adequately.
