Can a species have a rock bottom moment? That flash of clarity when 8.1 billion people look in the (very large, possibly space-based) mirror, take a frank assessment of their collective bleary eyes and shaky hands, and then wearily admit to themselves that they’re spending way too much money buying tickets to see the Despicable Me/Minions movies?
This little musing brought to you by a sort of, let’s call it, milestone post from Deadline today, which casually mentions that the Illumination franchise—already the most successful animated series of all time, by a pretty comfortable margin, in terms of box office receipts—has now cleared the $5 billion mark at the global box office. And while that doesn’t hold a candle to something like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s worth noting that Gru and his horrible yellow spawn have done this with only six movies to their names—one of which isn’t even finished rampaging through theaters just yet. (It’s going to win the weekend box office easily, for instance, despite Oz Perkins’ new Nicolas Cage horror flick Longlegs putting in a shockingly good $20 million-minimum showing.)
They’re consistent little suckers, too: Excepting the first film in the franchise (which “only” made $543 million), each movie in the series has brought in at least $900 million internationally, with 2015's Minions topping the list with a total global haul of $1.159 billion. Global appeal, too: The little bastards absolutely kill in the U.K., Mexico, and China, where the films traditionally have their best non-U.S. performance.
Fuck, are the Minions better than us? They wouldn’t spend $5 billion to watch competently made, ultimately soulless children’s movies about us.
Despicable Me 4 has currently made $288 million globally; it’s expected to add at least another 44 million in U.S. takings alone this weekend.