Friday Estimates: Minions On Pace for Century Opening, Perhaps Record

July 11, 2015

Minions

The Friday estimates are in and Minions pulled in $46.2 million. On the one hand, this makes my job as a box office analyst easy, because all I have to say is “Wow!” On the other hand, it is hard to compare this film to others to calculate its most likely weekend haul, because there are so few animated films that opened this well.

Inside Out opened with $34.37 million its first day on its way to an opening weekend of $90.44 million, but it was also an original IP and earned some of the best reviews of the year, so I don't think Minions will match its internal multiplier. The current record holder for an opening weekend for an animated film is Shrek the Third with $122.54 million and it started with a $39.33 million opening day. It too earned mixed reviews, but it opened in May, so we can't use it as a comparison, because kids were still in school on the Friday and couldn’t go see matinee showings. Let’s go with Cars 2. It was also a sequel that earned weak reviews, and it earned $66.14 million during its opening weekend off of a $25.72 million opening day. If Minions has a similar run, then it will earn about $44 million on Saturday and $32 million on Sunday for a weekend total of $122 million. That's puts it within striking distance of Shrek 3’s record and significantly ahead of Friday's predictions.

The other two new releases are looking at soft openings. The Gallows posted $4.5 million, which will is good enough for a film that cost less than $1 million to make (although much more to market). Self/Less is looking at a very disappointing weekend after pulling in an estimated $1.958 million on Friday.
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Filed under: Friday Estimates, Minions, Self/Less, Inside Out, The Gallows