Minions Merrily Make Money At The Box Office

Those little Minions continued to be mighty at the box office, as their first spin-off movie delivered the second biggest opening weekend ever for an animated movie, only behind the $121 million debut for Shrek The Third back in 2007. It also garnered the biggest opening day of all-time for an animated film (it made $46 million on Friday), meaning these Minions didn't do a "despicable" job for their first time flying solo at the box office.


The fact that the movie was a little more front-loaded than usual for an animated movie does suggest it'll be more fall off quicker in coming weekends than usual than typical summeertime family fare. But Universal doesn't need to fret; the feature has a tiny $74 million budget that film has already more than tripled at the worldwide box office. Look for Minions to easily soar over $300 million domestically and over $1 billion worldwide.

Jurassic World came in at no. 2 for the weekend, making $18.1 million in its fifth weekend. That's a small 38% dip from last weekend, and the dino centric movie has now made $590 million. Look for it to cross $600 million by Friday and surpass the final gross of The Avengers by the end of the month. Fellow June box office phenomenon Inside Out slipped to third place this weekend, though it held solidly in the face of Minions, only losing 42% from last weekend, and it's already up to $283 million domestically. It should surpass the final gross of Pete Doctors last PIXAR movie, Up, by next weekend.

It looks like Terminator: Genisys will miss $100 million domestically, even if it did hold up slightly better than average this weekend, only losing 49% over the frame for a $13.7 million second weekend and a total haul of $68.7 million. A similarly dismal fate awaits The Gallows, which barely cracked $10 million for the weekend. That was only slightly ahead of the second weekend of Magic Mike XXL, which had by far the best dip in the entire Top 10 losing only 25% for a second weekend of $9.6 million. The film still lags behind the first Magic Mike, though the gap between the two is now far smaller than it was last weekend.

Self/Less made for a brutal antithesis to the rapturous reception that the Deadpool Comic-Con footage received, with the newest Ryan Reynolds movie bombing at the box office, making only $5.3 million for the weekend. Only 10 2015 films have had worse opening weekends in wide release, making for a pitiful performance. Conversely, Baahubali: The Beginning, a foreign film from India, broke out and made an impressive $3.5 million at only 236 locations.

The top 12 movies this weekend made $196 million, which is a whopping 42% increase over the same frame last year when Dawn of The Planet of The Apes debuted. With uber buzzy films like Ant-Man, Trainwreck, Paper Towns, Vacation and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation on the horizon, July 2015 will very likely continue to be a financially prosperous place.

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