PIXAR’S BIGGEST TOY STORY ISN’T A MOVIE

Sales of toys and other merchandise associated with Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 3 are expected to gross about $2.4 billion worldwide this year alone, far exceeding the amount the film will likely earn theatrically and on DVD combined, according to the British website KnowYourMoney.co.uk. The website noted that the studio’s 2006 feature Cars, the poorest box-office performer for the studio between 1998 and the present ($462 million worldwide), has nevertheless generated an average of $2 billion a year in merchandise sales since its release. On the eve of Toy Story 3‘s debut in the U.K. and elsewhere where it was delayed because of the World Cup, the website published charts, under the heading “The Financial Success of Pixar,” showing the production costs and grosses of each of the 11 Pixar movies released since the original Toy Story in 1995. It predicted that the new film, which has already grossed more than any previous Pixar movie in the U.S., will go on to “set a new benchmark in Pixar’s already phenomenally successful history.”