'Return of the Tiny Men' Eyes Record $105M Projected U.S. Debut

Disney's long awaited Return of the Tiny Men arrived on tracking today with a projected $105M-$110M opening per industry sources. The threequel arrives in theaters on Apr. 14 and is the first Walt Disney Animation Studios release of the year and second animated film overall so far after Hyper by 20th Century Animation on March 31. That result for Tiny Men 2 will be a record for Disney as it'll be their best opening since Frozen II in November 2019 while also possibly being the biggest animated spring opening of all time give or take The Super Mario Bros. Movie 's performance a week earlier.

Given the fervent response by fans to trailers, it would not be shocking to see an opening on par with Toy Story 4 's $120.6 million give or take the walk-up business of family audiences but the accuracy is still mending given the impact of Disney from the pandemic and the pandemic in general.

The film's big opening is a step down from recent films by sister studio 20th Century Animation but still big enough to be declared a win. However, these projections are almost certain to go up given the awareness of the film is on par with Captain Marvel around the same time of it's release cycle and that film opened up to $153.4 million.

The pic is currently strong with all audiences, given that mainly 36% of the awareness is coming from 18-24 year olds as well as older audiences.

Gary Trousdale directed this movie, which stars Halle Berry as Lilly James, Neil Patrick Harris as RJ, Ellen Barkin as Frode, Keke Palmer as Lauren James, Amandla Stenberg as Isadora Williams, Megan Good as Amaya Watts, Chloe Bailey as Ylume, Clint Eastwood as Herbert John James, Wiz Khalifa as Dikembe, Larenz Tate as Wilson Thomas, Hugo Weaving as Blitz Axis, Jason Statham as Abhi, William H. Macy as Gorath, and Alan Tudyk as Sir William.

Currently the best spring animated opening belongs to Zootopia with $75.6 million, where Return of the Tiny Men will have no trouble blasting past but getting to Frozen II 's $135 million might be tough given the competition but it'll outdo Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania 's $106 million to be the biggest Disney opening so far this year.

At the end of February, it was announced that Return of the Tiny Men would open earlier on April 14, instead of April 21. Given the positive feedback and hype of the film, Disney moved the film up an extra week in response to fan demand.

For reference, the original film grossed $171.1 million in 1988 with $70.8 million coming from domestic and $100.3 million from internationally. Currently, after various re-releases, the film has grossed $322 million worldwide.