When it comes to evaluating the financial performance of top movies, it isn’t about what a film grosses at the box office. The true tale is told when production budgets, P&A, talent participations and other costs collide with box office grosses and ancillary revenues from VOD to DVD and TV. To get close to that mysterious end of the equation, Deadline is repeating our Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament for 2018, using data culled by seasoned and trusted sources.

THE FILM

Moviegoers waited 14 years for a sequel to Disney/Pixar’s two-time Oscar-winning superhero family feature The Incredibles, but filmmaker Brad Bird already knew what the story would be when he was doing the press tour on the first movie. The pitch: a reversal on the original pic’s storyline. Instead of the father of the family, Bob Parr, being called out of retirement for a career in tights, this time the heroics were reserved for superhero family matriarch Helen Parr. It’s odd when a huge hit takes 14 years to sequelize, but here, the delay stemmed from life getting in the way: Bird made Pixar’s Ratatouille and J.J. Abrams wanted him to direct Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. In fact, Pixar fast-tracked Incredibles 2, putting it on a 2 1/2-year production run, which is ambitious for an animated feature film.

THE BOX SCORE

Here are the costs and revenues as our experts see them:

THE BOTTOM LINE

The long gap between pictures didn’t hurt, and Disney employed a similar release plan Disney/Pixar pulled off with great success for 2016’s Finding Dory ($486.2M domestic box office, $1.028B worldwide) which arrived in theaters 13 years after the original Finding Nemo. Incredibles 2 beat several of Finding Dory‘s records including best opening for an animated film ($182.6M) and best animated film at the domestic B.O. ($608.6M). Incredibles 2’s profit here of $447.4M even beats Dory‘s $296.6M by 51%. Other records earned by Incredibles 2 included best worldwide debut for an animated film ($235.8M), and overall the second highest-grossing animated pic of all time with a global haul of $1.24B, behind Disney’s own Frozen ($1.26B). What’s the trick to the Incredibles 2 success? Like Dory, it’s multi-generational appeal: The kids who adored the film when they were younger didn’t seem to outgrow it, and Disney found a new generation of fans.