Sure, Gru might’ve turned good because of love and family and whatnot. But maybe the box office points to a secondary reason why this one-time villain abandoned his villainous ways. After all, who needs nefarious, outlandish burglaries when you’re part of the most lucrative animated franchise in history?
Despicable Me 4—featuring Gru, his fam and his babbling yellow minions—cruised to its second-straight box-office win this weekend, earning an estimated $44.7 million in North America. That pushed its overall domestic earnings to $211.1 million.
Add in the film’s international grosses, and Despicable Me 4’s worldwide bank account now stands at $437.8 million. And that, according to Variety, makes the Despicable Me series (including two Minions movies) the first animated franchise to earn more than $5 billion. You can buy a lot of bananas with that sort of green.
While everyone expected Despicable Me 4 to repeat at No. 1, our second-place entrant is a bit of a surprise. Longlegs, a seriously unsettling horror flick, crawled into silver medal position with its $22.6 million. That’s the biggest opening ever for its distributor, Neon, and the most lucrative debut for an R-rated film this year. (That mark will likely be broken in two weeks when Deadpool & Wolverine opens, but still.)
Inside Out 2 slid to third place with $20.7 million, increasing its lead as the year’s biggest film. The Disney/Pixar sequel has now earned $572.6 million domestically in 2024—more than doubling the earnings of second-place Dune: Part Two ($272.1 million). And it’s already the second-biggest PG film ever, according to Box Office Mojo. It trails only Incredibles 2 ($608.6 million) for that honor.
A Quiet Place: Day One settled into fourth place with $11.8 million. And another newcomer, Fly Me to the Moon, blasted into fifth place with $10 million.
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I’m ecstatic to see Inside Out 2 having done so well. There are so many ways a “teenager growing up” story could have been heavily cliched, and all of them felt like they were either avoided or given a story excuse to be present. And the ending being ambiguous was a smart decision since its pivotal question wasn’t the point of the story despite being also a cliche of its own.