Minions Winning Box Office In Opening Weekend

A spinoff of the Despicable Me films, “Minions” looks sure to out outdo the originals.

Since the time I saw Despicable Maine 1 & 2, I fell in love with those tiny, yellow, blabbering Minions of Gru. Its Friday-to-Sunday multiplier was a 2.63, and that’s probably a fair guess for the performance of Minions, though it does skew younger. Minions is also looking to be the fourth movie this year to open with more than $100 million in its opening weekend.

Minions had a successful Friday, bringing in $46.2 million, and it also shattered a record during its special Thursday night screenings.

There were some other new releases this weekend, believe it or not.

Warner Bros. horror film The Gallows earned $900,000 Thursday night. With a reported budget of $100,000, this film followed the Blumhouse model of development and marketing, and while it won’t necessarily be as huge as some of the company’s other hits, (Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Purge), it will nonetheless get the job done. People familiar with prerelease audience surveys had estimated the movie would make between $8 million and $10 million by the end of the weekend.

Opening at number 7 with possibly $5.2 million could be the new Ryan Reynolds movie Self/Less, followed by a series of hold-overs from recent weeks.

We have one surprise in the top 10.

The first “Despicable Me” opened with a $56.3 million weekend in 2010 and went on to finish with $251 million in the USA, while the sequel launched with $83.5 million in 2013 on its way to a $368 million domestic total.

If Minions finishes north of US$120 million, it could knock Shrek the Third out of the No 1 spot for an animated film debut.

But “Minions” was the weekend’s big story – and the “A” rating it got from theatergoers polled by CinemaScore suggests the film will have real staying power. In France, it has grossed $6.2 million in its first two days, as well as scoring the biggest opening day of 2015 to date, animated or otherwise. The BOP staff discussed the decline of the franchise in last week’s Monday Morning Quarterback, and as was commented there, it certainly does appear as if it will be many years before we see an attempt at another reboot. The Channing Tatum-starring feature is expected to grab around $10 million at the box office.