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Jason Barney: I think part of the reason for this success - I am not saying all of it, but part - is the utter lack of animated features at the box office lately. I understand that Age of Ultron and Jurassic World lean younger; we are talking about super heroes and dinosaurs and it is the summer movie season. However, the last animated children's film released was Home, and it was 13 weeks ago. That is an incredibly long time for the family demographic to be ignored in the market place.

The other obvious reason for such a large opening is the word-of-mouth. When a film starts out of the gate with a 98% fresh rating, it is going to suck in a lot of people who were sitting on the fence. With cellphones and text messaging, it does not take long for the quality of a film to spread to people who are thinking about going to the movies. If a friend sees something of this high quality, you can be assured they are telling other parents with kids about the must see option that just opened.

Finally, Pixar has its own brand now. People want to see the very cool ideas this company comes up with.

Kim Hollis: I'd agree that reviews have probably propelled it to a higher-than-normal debut. Pixar films have a comfortable opening weekend range ($65-70 millon) that Inside Out easily exceeded. I do think people were ready for something new and unique, and the fact that people were universally singing its praises is enough to push a lot of undecideds over the edge.

Edwin Davies: I think everyone else has covered many of the main reasons for the film's success, but I'll throw out one more: it's a film about a young girl, in which the narrative is primarily carried by two female characters. Pixar films have a pretty universal appeal, but they primarily make films about male characters with female characters pushed to the sidelines or put into supporting roles. Brave was an attempt to change that, but the relatively lackluster quality of the film prevented it from being a smash. Inside Out is much more relatable to young girls, who would have been out in force to see a film that offered something for them (and which, thankfully, offered something for their parents) which probably helped it break out more than previous Non-sequels from Pixar have in the past.

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