- “Despicable Me” topped the box office for the holiday weekend, grossing $75 million from tickets sold Friday through Sunday and $122.6 million since its release on Wednesday, according to studio estimates.
- The animated sequel’s success continues a strong summer moviegoing streak that included Sony’s “Bad Boys 2,” Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” and Paramount’s prequel “A Quiet Place 2: Day One,” and follows a lackluster box office performance earlier this year.
- “Inside Out 2” has grossed $1.22 billion in ticket sales to date, making it the fifth highest-grossing animated film in the world.
After a historically bad first half of the year, box office numbers have boomed.
Illumination Animation’s sequel “Despicable Me” topped the holiday weekend box office with $75 million in ticket sales from Friday through Sunday and $122.6 million since its release on Wednesday, according to studio estimates on Sunday.
The Independence Weekend box office success of Universal Pictures’ Minions further extended a huge box office surge for arguably the most lucrative movie franchise in cinema today, and continued a strong summer for Hollywood.
Steve Carell, Will Ferrell and others preview ‘Despicable Me 4’
Heading into the summer movie season, overall ticket sales are down more than 40% from pre-COVID levels, but the film industry has seen a string of recent hits. After Sony’s “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” beat expectations, Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” quickly surpassed $1 billion in ticket sales worldwide, the biggest record since “Barbie.” Paramount’s prequel “A Quiet Place: Day One” also beat expectations last weekend.
Hollywood’s summer is looking bright, with Deadpool & Wolverine expected to gross $160 million later this month.
“If you look at the industry mood from about eight weeks ago, it’s completely different than it is today,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “This song is about how much can change in a day, how much can change in a month.”
The Minions appear in a scene from “Despicable Me,” the top-grossing film at the box office, bringing in $75 million in ticket sales over the holiday weekend. (Illumination & Universal Pictures via The Associated Press)
It helps if you have the Minions at your disposal. Since their debut in the original Despicable Me in 2010, each film in the series (which includes two sequels and two Minions spinoffs) has seemed guaranteed to make around $1 billion at the box office. The four films so far have grossed between $939 million (2022’s Minions 2) and $1.26 billion (2015’s Minions) worldwide.
That success has given Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri one of the most enviable track records in Hollywood. Directed by Chris Renaud and Patrick Delage, Despicable Me features a returning voice cast led by Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig, and doubles down on the Minion mayhem. Reviews for the latest film, which features a witness protection program and a group of Minions transformed into a superhero squad, weren’t particularly good (the latest review on Rotten Tomatoes was 54%), but in its 12-year run, the Minions have barely slowed down.
“Frankly, this is one of the most beloved franchises in the history of film and certainly animation,” said Universal distribution chief Jim Oh. “Chris Meledandri and Illumination have their finger on the pulse of what families and audiences around the world want to see.”
Family films are driving the box office, with “Despicable Me” performing well even as “Inside Out 2” continues to hold sizable crowds. In its fourth weekend, the Pixar sequel brought in another $30 million domestically and $78.3 million overseas.
“Inside Out 2” has become the biggest hit of the year with $1.22 billion in ticket sales to date and is rapidly climbing the rankings of all-time animated films, currently ranking as the fifth highest-grossing animated film worldwide.
Far from cannibalizing Despicable Me 4’s opening weekend box office takings, Inside Out 2 may have helped bring families back to the cinema.
“I think what’s happened is that the release schedule has finally settled into a good rhythm,” Dergarabedian said, referring to the chaos that last year’s strike caused to the movie schedule. “It’s all about momentum.”
“Inside Out 2” continues its strong run, catapulting it into second place at the domestic weekend box office. Last week’s top new release, “A Quiet Place Part 1,” dropped to third place with $21 million in its second weekend and $21.1 million from international theaters. Paramount’s prequel has grossed $178.2 million worldwide in its two weeks, a steep 60% drop.
The string of hits has some studios raising their expectations for the summer movie season. Heading into theaters’ most lucrative season, analysts had been expecting summer box office take of $3 billion, down from the usual $4 billion. Now it looks more likely to be closer to $3.4 billion.
Another hot new release over the weekend was Ti West’s “MaXXXine,” the third installment in the A24 slasher film series starring Mia Goth. Screened in 2,450 locations, “MaXXXine” grossed $6.7 million, the highest grossing film of the series. The film, which follows “X” and “Pearl” (both due for release in 2022), sees Goth play a starlet in 1980s Hollywood who is pursued by a killer known as the Night Stalker.
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Angel Studios, which released the surprise summer hit “Sound of Freedom” last year, struggled to achieve similar success with its latest Christian film, “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot,” which debuted with $3.2 million.
Kevin Costner’s big-budget Horizon: An American Saga failed to do much to turn things around at the box office in its second weekend. The first in what Costner hopes to be a four-part series (with a second installment due for release in August by Warner Bros.) earned $5.5 million in its second weekend. The film, which cost more than $100 million to make, has grossed $22.2 million in its first two weeks.
These are estimates of ticket sales in U.S. and Canadian cinemas from Friday through Sunday, according to ComScore. Final domestic figures will be released on Monday.
- Despicable Me, $75 million.
- Inside Out 2, $30 million.
- “A Quiet Place” opening night: $21 million.
- “MaXXXine,” $6.7 million.
- Bad Boys 2, $6.5 million.
- “Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter 1,” $5.5 million.
- “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot,” $3.2 million.
- “The Mystery 2898,” $1.8 million.
- “Biker Riders,” $1.3 million.
- “Kinds of Kindness,” $860,000.
