By: Lucas Chi

This Fourth of July, the new Minions movie, Minions: Rise of Gru, made by Universal Studios and Illumination, immediately started making money and made 108.5 million dollars in just one weekend. The movie has beaten the old record of the most money made in four days, which was held by “Transformers: Dark of The Moon”.

The Movie is a spin-off based on the original Despicable Me. Despicable Me is a very popular movie also made by Illumination.

After playing on 4,391 different screens across North America, Minions: Rise of Gru has become yet another part of the recent successes that Universal Studios has released. The production company recently released other movies leading up to Minions: Rise of Gru including Sing 2 and, or The Bad Guys, and they were both popular in theaters.

The movie was originally planned to be released in July 2020 but had to be postponed because of COVID-19.

“It’s a tremendous debut,” said Jim Orr, who is Universal’s president of domestic distribution. “It’s playing very broadly across North America. Every single market doing extraordinarily well.” This is true, as it has made a total of 202.2 million dollars worldwide. In total, the Despicable Me franchise and Minions series have made 3.7 billion dollars since the first movie was released in 2010 including 267 million dollars from merch.

Minions: Rise of Gru is rated 72% on Rotten Tomatoes, but many people believe that it deserves a higher rating. A Rotten Tomatoes rating measures how good a group of people think a movie is. They can say that a film is “rotten”, or they can say that it is “fresh”. “Rotten” movies aren’t very popular or well known, but “fresh” movies are the popular ones and the well-liked ones.

Minions: Rise of Gru is popular for all ages. In fact, 12% of all viewers were under 10 years old.

Minions is similar to another very popular movie, Top Gun: Maverick. They both waited for a good time to release, like a holiday, and the wait was worth it.

Top Gun: Maverick holds second place (behind Minions: Rise of Gru) in the listing of movies that made the most money this weekend from a movie. Other movies that have made a ton of money this weekend include Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Lightyear, and Jurassic World: Dominion.

Recently, movies have been making tons of money, and a possible reason is that summer has just started, and families now have more time to get together and go out. Despicable Me is a very “family” type movie and is for everyone. This could be one of the main reasons why it blew up so quickly.

In conclusion, the new Minions movie has blasted onto one of the best movies of the year and is for everyone to watch. It has made record-breaking amounts of money in just a weekend.

Sources: washingtonpost.com