Families weren’t scared to return to the box office during the pandemic and have shelled out $300.9M to date on Illumination Entertainment and Universal’s Minions: The Rise of Gru, making it the first animated movie to cross the three century mark stateside during Covid, and since Frozen 2 opened back in November 2019.
Rise of Gru, through 25 days, is currently pacing 4% ahead of 2015’s Minions at the same point in time, which ended its U.S./Canada stateside run at $336M, and about even pace with Despicable Me 2, the biggest title in the franchise at the domestic B.O. at $368M.
In its fourth weekend, Rise of Gru continued to do double digit millions with $18M, -33%. On Monday, at 3,816 locations, the pic did $2.75M, -52% from Sunday.
Rise of Gru becomes the the third Universal animated film to reach $300M within 4 weeks domestically, the previous two being Despicable Me 2 and Illumination’s The Secret Life of Pets.
To date during the pandemic, there’s been six movies to cross $300M in U.S./Canada: Spider-Man: No Way Home ($800M), Top Gun: Maverick ($637.3M), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ($411.3M), The Batman ($369M), and Jurassic World Dominion ($366.1M).
Minions: Rise of Gru was propelled by the biggest promotional partner campaign valued at $285M. The franchise is a vital evergreen for NBCUniversal counting over $6 billion in retail sales off a global franchise box office cume of $4.36B.