‘Minions 2’ Rises With Despicable $48 Million Friday

“Have we started the Gru?” “Yes. The Gru rises!”

Well, I guess Disney can’t blame Covid for kid-targeted toons underperforming at the box office. Following two years of Covid-caused delay, Universal and Illumination’s Minions: The Rise of Gru opened with $48.1 million on Friday. That’s the third-biggest opening day (not adjusted for inflation) for an animated film. It’s just ahead of Minions ($46 million in 2015) and Toy Story 3 ($47 million in 2019). It’s behind only Finding Dory ($55 million in 2016) and Incredibles 2 ($71 million in 2019). That includes $10.75 million in Thursday previews (the third-biggest animated preview gross behind Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2), meaning its raw Friday gross was $37.35 million. That compares quite favorably with the $46 million opening day (from a $6.2 million Thursday preview gross) for the first Minions in the summer of 2015. Heck, it’s 65% higher than the $29 million Friday (from a $4.1 million Thursday) for Despicable Me 3 in July of 2017.

Despicable Me 3 earned $72 million over the Fri-Sun part of its $99 million Fri-Wed July 4th holiday debut. Minions opened with $115 million over its Fri-Sun debut. Minions: The Rise of Gru looks to earn around $110 million over the Fri-Sun frame (above The Secret Life of Pets’ $104 million debut in 2016) and $130 million over the full Fri-Mon holiday weekend. With decent reviews, obvious general audience/casual moviegoer appeal (including an A from Cinemascore) and the Minions and Gru’s status as marquee characters, that could tilt upward. It’s going to end Sunday night as the second-biggest animated film since Frozen II ($471 million from a $130 million debut in November of 2019). It will be behind only Illumination’s Sing 2 ($161 million domestic) from this past Christmas, a cume down from Sing ($271 million) but on par with The Secret Life of Pets 2 ($160 million) in 2019.

Comcast’s toons (The Bad Guys, Sing 2, etc.) are pulling business-as-usual grosses, which puts (quality aside) the $133 million, $255 million and (likely) $225 million finishes for Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto and Lightyear in a much grimmer light. Honestly, the danger was clear when Raya opened with $7.5 million in March of 2021 while being available at home for an extra $30 on Disney+ a week after Warner Bros.’ Tom & Jerry opened with $14.4 million despite being concurrently on HBO Max. We can debate which big stumblers (Death on the Nile, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Morbius, etc.) would have performed better in non-Covid times and sans streaming weirdness, although there are plenty of movies (Free Guy, Godzilla Vs. Kong, Top Gun: Maverick, Uncharted, etc.) that overperformed their pre-Covid expectations. However, the only seemingly surefire tentpoles that have imploded in 2021 and 2022 have been Disney animated features.

With a likely global cume of around $202 million, Minions is a rare spin-off that, think Deadpool alongside the X-Men movies, is more popular than the initial franchise. I wrongly figured that Minions 2 would play more like a Despicable Me sequel than a Minions sequel, not that a $75-$85 million opening would have been a tragedy on an $80 million budget. However, the Minions are still incredibly popular characters with both today’s kids and adults just young enough to have been wee-ones when the first Despicable Me opened in July of 2010. Universal made the right call to hold the movie until this weekend (making it the last Covid-delayed release from 2020) just as Paramount made the right call to keep Top Gun: Maverick until this Memorial Day weekend. As such, I’m expecting a new commercial with Kevin, Stuart, and Bob butchering a karaoke cover of “Hold My Hand.”