20th Century Fox
"Finding Dory", Pixar's summer giant, has been steamrolling its competition every weekend since it opened. With a domestic total of $396 million so far, it is set to overtake "Frozen" and "Toy Story 3" as the third highest-grossing animated feature of all time, according to Box Office Mojo.
This weekend, we will see another animated movie take over the big screens.
"The Secret Life of Pets" opened Thursday to great fanfare. The animal-centric animation had the third highest Thursday opening ever for an animated movie, bringing in $5.3 million. "Finding Dory" took the second place slot in the category when it opened at $6.2 million earlier this summer, according to Box Office Mojo.
Four of the top ten highest-grossing movies of the year have been animated, including "Zootopia", "The Angry Birds Movie" and "Kung Fu Panda 3," in addition to "Finding Dory."
If "The Secret Life of Pets" continues the trend it started Thursday, it will mean half of the top-ten movies will be animated.
Comcast and Disney are the two companies that stand to benefit most from the animation boom. Disney has brought in $1.9 billion at the box office so far this year. Titles like "Zootopia", "Finding Dory", "The Jungle Book" and "Captain America: Civil War" have all contributed more than $300 million to that total.
Comcast, owner of Universal Studios, currently sits in fourth place in the movie studio rankings for 2016, but a good showing of "The Secret Life of Pets" would help it move up the ladder.
20th Century Fox sits in movie-studio second place, with "Kung Fu Panda 3" as its top grossing animated movie. Warner Brothers is in third place, but it does not currently have an animated movie in its 2016 lineup.
"Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates" opened alongside "The Secret Life of Pets" on Thursday, and brought in $1.6 million, beating expectations.