New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Edwin Davies: This is pretty amazing. Not only is it nearly record breaking for an animated film, but it's also covered the film's production budget in the space of three days. That's a very good start, and even if the film doesn't hold up as well as its predecessors, both of which earned about four times their opening weekend, this will still end up being wildly profitable for Universal.

Ryan Kyle: I think we can declare that this is an exceptional opening for a foreign language film (with most of the dialogue being Minion-gibberish). I don't think any yellow characters have been slapped on so many pieces of merchandise since The Simpsons fever in the ‘90s. Regardless, if you want to classify the film as a sequel/prequel/spin-off, this is a great start, and the movie has probably already made its money back in terms of the aforementioned licensing deals Universal struck for these little characters. I find it strange why they even cast so many A-listers when they could have saved the budget, because let's face it, nobody bought a ticket here for Jon Hamm or Sandra Bullock. While Disney and WB are banking on superheroes, Universal has proven this summer time after time that you don't need a guy in a cape for a giant opening or to launch a franchise.

Kim Hollis: It's oddly just about what I expected, and yet that doesn't mean the box office for Minions isn't spectacular. It's the second biggest animated opening ever - beating Toy Story 3 is huge. I think it's pretty amazing that we got the #2 and #4 biggest debut weekends for animated films over the past month.

Max Braden: I remember thinking with Despicable Me that I didn't care for Gru, but I'd enjoy a movie with just the Minions. Clearly, that was a widely held position and Universal gave the people what they wanted to see. I don't think it's too much of a surprise that the movie did well, given how the Minions seem to be custom made for kids by speaking amusing gibberish and behaving like the Three Stooges.

Where it's more impressive, though, is in comparison to the Madagascar franchise. In that series the penguins were the sidekicks who steal the show and got their own movie as the fourth entry in the series. While Madagascar 2 and 3 opened better than the first movie of the series (like Despicable Me 2), the Penguins of Madagascar movie opened to less than half of the other sequels and failed to gross as much as its budget. Not only did Minions flip that box office performance, it's the most successful opening for a spinoff movie ever. (Judging those is a little vaguer than sequels, especially in the era of prequels, but I'd say X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Maleficent are the nearest examples.)

Continued:       1       2       3