Weekend projections: Minions clear $100 million in strong July 4 debut

July 3, 2022

Minions: The Rise of Gru will pick up an impressive $108.51 million over three days and $127.9 million over four, according to Universal’s Sunday-morning projection. That’s the second-best debut for the Despicable Me franchise, behind only the $115.7 million earned by the original Minions back in July, 2015. With Top Gun: Maverick continuing to perform well, the total box office this weekend looks like it will beat the July 4 Holiday weekend in 2019 in terms of total box office—another sign of the steady recovery of the theatrical market in 2022.

Here’s how the domestic numbers look as of Sunday (click on the image for the full chart of films reporting so far)…

The Rise of Gru is coming in a little ahead of our Friday-morning prediction, which was based on our model’s analysis of the fundamentals of the film, which expected a weekend around $75 million, and a separate analysis based on its Thursday previews. That second analysis proved to be right on the money: it predicted a three-day weekend of $108.3 million, with 0.2% of this morning’s projection. In other words, Minions is holding up well as the weekend continues.

Perhaps more importantly, this weekend’s result continues a series of good results for new wide releases. Our “pandemic adjustment,” which estimates the proportion of regular pre-pandemic moviegoers that are back to their old theater-going habits has been trending slowly higher over the past few months. With this result, it now stands at 74%, which is the highest it has reached. It’s also the first time the adjustment has got significantly above the key 70% level, which is what I have been using as an expected “high water mark” since I started modeling the post-pandemic recovery back in 2020.

Further good news comes from the weekend performance of Top Gun: Maverick, which will decline just 14% from last weekend and is nearing $600 million at the domestic box office. The model actually thought it would do fractionally better this weekend, but it remains the standout film of the Summer, and should have a great day tomorrow as families look for something to do on July 4.

Lightyear will decline another 64% this weekend, partly due to competition from Minions, but also, frankly, because it has failed to connect with audiences. Its roughly $6.5 million over three days will take it past $100 million in total, but it might end up struggling to beat The Good Dinosaur as Pixar’s worst performer at the domestic box office (excluding the pandemic-affected Onward). Rather than marking a triumphant return to theaters for the animation studio, Lightyear raises a question mark over Disney’s long term strategy for the animation studio.

- Studio weekend projections
- All-time biggest weekends - All-time top-grossing movies in North America
- All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com

Filed under: Despicable Me