It is no secret that originality has become a scarce commodity in Hollywood. Scrolling through the list of the top domestic opening weekends of all time, you would not arrive at a truly original movie — i.e., not a sequel, prequel, reboot, or adaptation of some other source material — until the 64th entry on the list, 2009's Avatar.

That is, until today. Inside Out, the 15th animated feature film from Pixar Animation Studios, opened this weekend with an estimated $91.1 million in North America, rocketing past Avatar's $77 million opening to become the best debut for an original movie in Hollywood history. (It is also the best debut gross for a film that did not open at number one. Jurassic World continued its astronomic box office run with an estimated $102 million in its second weekend.)

For fans of Pixar, this news could not arrive at a more crucial time for the studio. Ever since it released Toy Story 20 years ago, Pixar has stood as the only top-tier creative force in Hollywood built on the commercial promise of original filmmaking. From 1995 through 2010, the studio released just two sequels, 1999's Toy Story 2 and 2010's Toy Story 3, and both of those films felt as vibrant and ingenious as the best of the studio's original movies.

Since 2010, however, Pixar's output has shifted drastically. It has released one sequel (2011's Cars 2) and one prequel (2013's Monsters University) that, to be kind, did not reach the studio's high standards for profoundly creative storytelling. And the studio's sole original film during this period, 2012's Brave, was a troubled production even by Pixar's creatively volatile standards. It opened to decent-if-not-enthusiastic reviews.

Commercially, things weren't much brighter. Even adjusting for ticket price inflation, Cars 2 was the lowest grossing film in Pixar history, and Brave was the second worst. Monsters University also fell toward the bottom of the list.