‘Minions’ Banks $115M For Second-Biggest Animated Opening of All-Time
For a brief moment this weekend, it looked like The Minions might overtake Shrek the Third for the biggest opening weekend of all-time for an animated film. Illumination’s latest slowed down by Sunday though and had to settle for second-best opening of all-time. No one is complaining though because that’s an incredible launch to the tune of $115.7 million.
What kind of legs will the yellow creatures have — the real test is in the weeks ahead. As Shrek the Third showed, a big opening doesn’t mean much if the film can’t sustain its momentum; that film ranks seventh on the list of all-time U.S. animation grosses with $322.7M, surpassed by a half-dozen films that started out more slowly but ultimately ended up attracting bigger audiences.
The 1st place opening by Minions makes it the second weekend in a row that an animated feature has topped the American box office. Last weekend, Pete Docter’s Inside Out finally took over the top spot in its third weekend in theaters. This weekend, the Pixar film slipped to third place behind both Minions and Jurassic World, with an estimated $17.7 million. It has grossed a fantastic $284.2M in the U.S. to date, and will soon surpass Up to become Pixar’s second-highest grossing original film of all-time, behind only the $339.7M take of Finding Nemo.
Inside Out also added $19.1M internationally, boosting its foreign total to $151.8M and its global cume to a $436M. With less than half of its territories opened, it’s too early to know where Inside Out will rank amongst Pixar’s output, but it is well on its way to becoming one of the studio’s most successful original releases globally, a remarkable accomplishment for such a bold and unconventional piece of storytelling.
Minions continued to rampage across the rest of the globe, too, picking up $124.3M internationally. The film has grossed $280.5M around the world, and combined with its U.S. take, has achieved a global total of $396.2M. The impressive part of this gross is how dominant the film has been in various territories: in Mexico, its $19.7 opening this weekend is the the 2nd biggest ever for any film release, according to Deadline; in Russia, the film’s $14.3M debut is also the 2nd best of all-time, behind only Furious 7; Argentina’s $5.6M launch is the best-ever for any film opening in that country; and France’s opening round of $12.1M is the country’s best opening for a movie since 2012.
Seth MacFarlane’s Ted 2 dropped from 5th to 7th at the American box office with $5.7M. After three weekends, it has grossed $71.7M in the U.S. and $53.2M abroad, for a global total of $124.9M. It won’t get anywhere near the neighborhood of the original Ted’s $549.4M global earnings.