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David Mumpower: The highest Pixar debut to date is $70.5 million. Even if we adjust for inflation, the biggest opening weekend is still only $87.4 million, which is a strong number but still not one of the twenty best of all-time. For whatever reason, Pixar titles have been stuck in the same $60-$70 million range since 2001 save for the one box office misstep, Ratatouille.

Back in 1999, Toy Story 2 was different in that it shattered box office records of the day with an $80.1 million performance over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend. Keeping in mind that there is precedent for this particular property to perform differently and better than other Pixar works, I am expecting Toy Story 3 to surpass Shrek the Third's $121.6 million to become the best animated debut of all-time. This of course assumes that Shrek Forever After (or whatever they're calling it this week) doesn't beat it first.

I know that there is a lot of reason to doubt this as it seems like each Pixar film has new cause for opening weekend optimism only to fall back into the Pixar range. Even so, I believe that the 3D ticket pricing that didn't help Up enough at the start but did allow it to become the second biggest Pixar film to date will factor in much more heavily this time out. Toy Story is THE Pixar franchise and this trailer kills from start to finish, particularly the Ken/Barbie bit and the heel turn.

On a sidenote, why does Andy have a Barbie doll in the first place?

Reagen Sulewski: What's interesting to me about this is that Pixar has finally found a way to create great trailers for these films, which have previously been pretty lackluster relative to the reputation of the films. The original one is basically "look at the shiny! And we've got Hanks and Allen!". The second is "Hey, you loved the first one ... here's some pants falling down jokes!". Here they're actually bringing elements of the rich story line into the trailer so that we actually know what the film will be about. I think it's because for the most part that Pixar's films tend to be about ideas rather than plot that they've had so much trouble compressing that into two and a half minutes, but this trailer represents a giant step forward in this series.

Josh Spiegel: David, my guess is that it's his little sister's Barbie; the character only shows up in the second film from the toy store, so I'd bet she just went to Molly (Andy's sister). Yes, I'm a Pixar fanatic.

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