Hoppers Wins Weekend With $46M as The Bride! Bombs at $7.3M — Pixar's Best Original Opening Since Coco
It is official, final, and historic. Pixar's Hoppers has topped the domestic box office with a $46 million opening weekend — the biggest launch for an original animated film since Coco debuted with $50 million in November 2017. Warner Bros.' The Bride!, meanwhile, collapsed at the altar with just $7.3 million from 3,304 theaters, ending the studio's remarkable nine-film winning streak and landing as the year's first unambiguous box office bomb.
Hoppers Final Numbers: $46M Domestic, $88M Worldwide
Hoppers claimed the No. 1 spot with a strong $46 million from 4,000 theaters. The film earned another $42 million overseas for a worldwide haul of $88 million. With stellar reviews and an enthusiastic audience reception — a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and an A grade on CinemaScore — Hoppers is primed to be Pixar's first original hit in nearly a decade.
Hoppers boasts both strong critical and audience scores — 94% on Rotten Tomatoes matches the audience score exactly. It also received a perfect five-out-of-five stars on PostTrak exits. Disney Co-Chairman of Disney Entertainment Alan Bergman said: "This is a fantastic original film from the incredible team at Pixar, and it's wonderful to see audiences coming out with their friends and families to enjoy it together."
Pixar Is Back: Hoppers Compared to Recent Flops
The Hoppers opening is not just good news — it is a genuine comeback story for a studio that had been struggling badly with original films in recent years. Hoppers earns the biggest domestic opening weekend for a Pixar original movie in the 2020s — bigger than Onward at $39.1 million, Elemental at $29.6 million, and far ahead of last summer's Elio at $20.8 million, which became Pixar's lowest-grossing film ever after inflation adjustment.
Hoppers cost $150 million to produce — Pixar's version of economizing, since the studio's US-based production model tends to run more expensive than rivals. Since the animation studio's films are made in the US rather than overseas, they tend to carry higher budgets than animated rivals. With spring break rolling out across the country through March, the film has a wide runway ahead.
Meryl Streep, Jon Hamm, and the Hoppers Voice Cast
The star-studded voice cast of Hoppers includes three-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep alongside Dave Franco, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, and SNL alums Bobby Moynihan, Vanessa Bayer, Melissa Villaseñor, and Ego Nwodim. Piper Curda voices lead character Mabel, an animal lover whose consciousness is transferred into a robotic beaver to uncover mysteries within the animal world.
Directed by Daniel Chong of We Bare Bears fame, Hoppers is Pixar's 30th animated feature film and runs one hour and 45 minutes, rated PG. Variety's chief film critic Owen Gleiberman praised the movie as "an out-of-the-box critter comedy that's like Bambi on crack."
The Bride! Final Bomb Numbers: $7.3M on $90M Budget
The Bride!, a feminist reimagining of The Bride of Frankenstein directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, collapsed in its box office debut with $7.3 million from 3,304 North American theaters. Since the Warner Bros. film cost $90 million to produce — a staggering price tag for the horror genre — and audience scores are downright scary, it is shaping up to be the year's first big bomb.
Warner Bros. found itself in the opposite position as Gyllenhaal's The Bride! entered bomb territory with a withering third-place domestic debut of $7.3 million, compared to a forecast of $16 million-plus, after getting lukewarm reviews and audience scores. This ends Warner Bros.' streak of nine consecutive No. 1 domestic debuts.
The R-rated gothic romance made headlines last week for comments Gyllenhaal made on a podcast, saying she was asked by Warner Bros. movie studio chiefs Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca to remove some of the film's more violent scenes. Starring Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, The Bride! draws inspiration from the 1935 film The Bride of Frankenstein.
Full Weekend Box Office Chart: March 6-8, 2026
The full domestic box office rankings for the weekend of March 6-8, 2026: No. 1 — Hoppers (Disney/Pixar) — $46 million. No. 2 — Scream 7 (Paramount) — $15.1 million in week 2, $76 million total. No. 3 — The Bride! (Warner Bros.) — $7.3 million. No. 4 — GOAT (Sony) — $4.9 million in week 3, $31.5 million total. No. 5 — Wuthering Heights (Warner Bros.) — $9.6 million in week 3, $75 million total.
David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research, said: "When Disney and Pixar have a picture that delivers, they set it up for the long run. It gives positive word-of-mouth time to circulate — families and groups have a chance to plan a visit, and kids return for repeat viewing. With spring holidays rolling out over the next few weeks, this should be a good run." The next major competition for Hoppers will not arrive until Easter weekend, when Universal and Illumination's Super Mario Bros. Galaxy Movie is expected to dominate theaters nationwide.
