“It is a phenomenal thing, these guys and their mastery of big storytelling and character development, delivering something that plays well to adults as well as kids, to girls as well as boys,” Dave Hollis, Disney’s head of distribution, said of Pixar. “Brave” matched the $66.1 million debut of Pixar’s “Cars 2,” with male automotive lead Lightning McQueen, over the same weekend a year ago. The film proved that audiences will turn up for a female hero, not just the male protagonists of past Pixar flicks, such as Woody and Buzz of “Toy Story,” the robot of “WALL-E” or the rat and his chef buddy of “Ratatouille.” “Brave” features a voice cast led by Kelly Macdonald and Emma Thompson in a mother-daughter story of a young Scottish princess defying tradition that requires her to marry against her will. That gave the Sony Pictures Classics release a whopping average of $75,874 a theater, compared to $16,028 in 4,164 cinemas for “Brave.” Woody Allen’s Italian romance “To Rome with Love” pulled in huge audiences in limited release, debuting with $379,371 in five theaters. The weekend’s other new wide release, Steve Carell and Keira Knightley’s apocalyptic romance “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” misfired with just $3.8 million, debuting at No. “The Pixar brand just carries so much weight with the audience, it doesn’t matter almost what the story is about if it has the Pixar name.” “Their track record is just unbelievable,” said Paul Dergarabedian, analyst for box-office tracker. 1 since “Toy Story” launched Hollywood’s age of computer animation in 1995.

“Brave” is the 13th-straight Pixar release to open at No.

1 for two weekends and added $20.2 million to raise its domestic total to $157.6 million. DreamWorks Animation’s animated “Madagascar” sequel had been No.

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