The Secret Life of Pets made it rain cats and dogs at the box office this weekend, to the tune of $103.2 million—a massive take that’s tens of millions more than analysts predicted and not two, not three, but five times as much money as the weekend’s No. 2 movie took in from Friday through Sunday. (That would be The Legend of Tarzan, which earned $20.6 million in its second weekend; with $20.4 million, Finding Dory was a close third.)

That $100 million-plus figure alone is enough to make the force behind Pets, Universal's Illumination Entertainment, howl with glee. But as the Associated Press points out, the numbers are notable for another reason as well: Pets just nabbed the best opening ever for an original animated property (not adjusted for inflation), handily breaking a record set just last summer when Disney and Pixar’s Inside Out opened to $90.4 million.

Speaking of Inside Out: its production budget was a reported $175 million. Secret Life of Pets, by contrast, was made for a comparatively low $75 million—meaning it took just a single weekend for the film to earn back its budget.

It’s no wonder, then, that movie pundits are wondering if this means Illumination could be a real competitor for Pixar, still the undisputed king of computer animation in terms of both popular success and critical accolades.

As of now, the studio doesn’t have the name recognition of a Pixar or a Dreamworks; moviegoers are much more likely to be familiar with Illumination’s most profitable creation, the Minions, than they are with the production company itself. That all could change, though, if Pets continues to climb and Illumination’s second 2016 project—another original story about anthropomorphic animals, this one a star-studded musical called Sing—also hits big.

If there’s tonal continuity between the two, Illumination will have made a good case for itself as the next big animation brand—especially at a time when its chief rivals are apparently more concerned with churning out sequels (Pixar’s Finding Dory and upcoming Cars 3, Toy Story 4, and Incredibles 2; Dreamworks’s Kung Fu Panda 3 and upcoming Croods 2 and How to Train Your Dragon 3) than they are with producing unique properties. (Not that Illumination is immune to the charm of sequels, of course; it’s got another Despicable Me planned for next summer.)

Quality-wise, Illumination doesn’t have quite the same batting average as the king it’s coming after; Finding Dory has a nearly perfect Rotten Tomatoes score, while Pets has a respectable but less impressive 75 percent. Illumination doesn’t have any Oscars, either. Even so, its newfound box-office dominance must be ruffling a few feathers up in Pixar’s Emeryville, California, headquarters—and if that sets off a chain reaction that ends in more inventive originals and fewer franchise extensions for all, Pixar and the House that Minions Built? Well, that means everybody wins.