The Despicable Me franchise is a juggernaut and it’s now quite clear one of the big reasons audiences were showing up to watch Gru and his attempts for supreme villainy were his little yellow sidekicks. Minions, opening in 4301 theaters this weekend absolutely dominated, bringing in $115.2 million, the second highest opening weekend of all-time for an animated feature behind Shrek the Third ($121.6m) and just ahead of Toy Story 3 ($110.3m). Yes, the Pixar sequel often considered to be the best of the trilogy is no match for these gibbering little fellas, which also scored an “A” CinemaScore from opening day audiences, so expect this one to continue to soar as it also went into the weekend with $142.6 million internationally as it slowly started hitting theaters internationally as far back as mid-June in Indonesia.
It’s hard to exactly quantify this result in comparison to Despicable Me 2, as that film opened on a Wednesday back in 2013. In five days the predecessor managed $143 million with nearly $60m of that coming in the first two days and it too earned an “A” CinemaScore and went on to hold the top spot at the box-office two weekends in a row. That’s unlikely to happen here as Minions will be facing Ant-Man next weekend, but I wouldn’t expect anything less than a 48% drop. Is that enough to put a little heat on the newest Marvel feature? Beyond that, you have to wonder if Universal will be scoring its third billion dollar earner this year with Minions.
Coming in second of the newcomers is The Gallows, another low budget horror (word is the budget was only $100,000) from Blumhouse, and while it scored $10 million, the “C” CinemaScore and negative reviews suggest this one won’t be hanging around too long.
Self/less definitely won’t be hanging around long after the $26 million budgeted film took in only $5.38 million this weekend. It can be moderately satisfied with a “B+” CinemaScore, but if no one is watching, financially that score doesn’t matter a lick.
Also finding its way into the top ten is Baahubali: The Beginning, a Tollywood release, that finds its Telugu version playing in 170 of the 236 theaters it opened in, the other 66 are in Tamil. The film actually opened on Thursday where it took in $1.3 million, but as for the three day weekend it scored an estimated $3.2 million.
In other news, Jurassic World is still crushing it, adding another $18.1 million to its total as it is now only $9.4 million shy of $600 million domestically. Another $33 million and it will top The Avenger ($623.3m) and set its sights on Titanic‘s #2 spot. Pixar’s Inside Out dropped 43%, bringing in $17.1 million.
Also, how about a kudos for Magic Mike XXL? The female-propelled release dropped only 25%, adding $9.6 million to its cume, which is now up to $48.3 million. It may be down from the first film’s total, but still proving there’s an audience beyond 18 year-old males studios can appeal to.
Finally, Terminator Genisys dropped 50%, bringing in $13.7 million as its cume is now $68.7 million.
Next weekend sees the release of Marvel’s Ant-Man plus Amy Schumer‘s big theatrical coming out party with Trainwreck. We’re also looking at limited releases of Woody Allen‘s Irrational Man, Mr. Holmes, The Look of Silence and The Stanford Prison Experiment. Anyone want to take a stab at early predictions for Trainwreck and Ant-Man?
