Minions: The Rise of Gru has had one of the biggest opening weekend earnings for a non-Disney animation movie in recent years – here's how much money Minions 2 has made and why. Like the 2015 Despicable Me spinoff movie Minions, Minions 2 focuses on the cute yellow beings that speak a nonsensical language and serve Gru (Steve Carell), a supervillain with a kind heart – at least at the end of 2010's Despicable Me. Minions 2 details the first meeting between 11-year-old aspiring supervillain Gru and the yellow beings while chronicling the dangers young Gru ends up finding himself in as a result of minion Otto's (Pierre Coffin) choices.
Previous installments in the Despicable Me film franchise have already proven successful with audiences, with every movie topping the one preceding it at the box office to date. 2017's Despicable Me 3, the last installment in the franchise before Minions: The Rise of Gru, earned $1.034 billion at the box office. While it still hasn't reached these highs, Minions 2 is the only animated movie to truly rival Disney's box office since 2019. Besides its lucrative movies, the Despicable Me franchise has developed a widely recognized brand over the years, with its minions at the center of its merchandise, short stories, video games, books, and other forms of entertainment media.
In the period since its release over a 4th of July opening weekend, Minions 2 earned $210 million domestically and almost $190 million internationally, grossing nearly $400 million worldwide. While Illumination's Despicable Me movie franchise has always been profitable for Universal Pictures due to the minions' marketability among children, few could have expected Minions: The Rise of Gru would have destroyed a post-COVID release like Lightyear in the competitive box office arena. Here's why Minions: The Rise of Gru has made so much money to date.
Why Minions: The Rise Of Gru Is Such A Box Office Success
Despite Despicable Me movies typically enjoying box office success, Minions 2's success wasn't a given, especially after finally seeing a release more than two years into a global pandemic. Nevertheless, Minions 2 has enjoyed enormous success thanks to social media platforms, especially TikTok, where trends featuring the movie erupted involving sharing clips featuring Yeat's "Rich Minion" song. In the days following "Rich Minion" going viral, "minions cults" were created over the short-form video sharing service, and the trend even migrated to real life, where formally-dressed teens went to Minions 2 screenings as GentleMinions, sometimes engaging in rowdy behavior as few theatres reported. This kind of widespread media attention served to hugely bolster Minions 2's contemporary image - with the result being a triumphant box office haul.
Minions 2's box office success could also be attributed to the timing of the release of the fifth installment in the Despicable Me franchise. As a family-oriented movie, Minions 2 being released over the 4th of July holiday weekend in the US made it the perfect choice for family entertainment in summer 2022. Coupled with the fact that the only other possible family release competing with it was Thor: Love & Thunder, which was released four days after on July 8th, it makes sense that Minions 2 found a highly profitable section of the moviegoing market over a typically big-money holiday weekend. Whatever the reasons behind it, Minions: The Rise of Gru certainly smashed box office records across its opening ten days - and the Gru origin story shows no signs of slowing down just yet.