‘Despicable Me 4’ Blasts Off to $122 Million Extended Box Office Opening

The Illumination film has hauled in $230 million worldwide in the early stages of its run

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Universal/Illumination’s “Despicable Me 4” continues its series’ status as one of the most reliable franchises at the box office, earning $122.4 million over its 5-day opening.

Internationally, where the film started its rollout last weekend, the film has grossed $107.6 million to bring its global cume to $230 million, with $73 million coming from overseas this weekend.

While not to the extent of Disney/Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” several of the audience patterns that boosted that film were at play here, including heavy support from nostalgic Gen Z adults with 21% coming from the 18-24 demographic.

Estimates also slowly ticked up over the weekend thanks to substantial walk-up traffic driven primarily by Latino audiences, who comprised 39% of the opening weekend audience with 29% white and Black and Asian audiences coming in at 12% each.

At the start of the year, with so much uncertainty over the release slate due to strike-related delays, “Despicable Me 4” stood as one of the few surefire hits. It has fulfilled that promise as the lifetime grosses for the “Despicable Me” series now reaches $1.64 billion and will cross $2 billion as the film will ride its A CinemaScore and 90% audience Rotten Tomatoes score to long legs at the box office.

Elsewhere, “Inside Out 2” continues to blast up the all-time animation box office list, added $45 million to its domestic total over the extended weekend as its totals now stand at $533 million domestic, the third highest ever for an animated film, and $1.21 billion worldwide, the fifth highest for animation.

In the coming week, “Inside Out 2” will pass the $1.3 billion mark and in doing so will pass “Incredibles 2” to become Pixar’s highest grossing film of all time.

Paramount’s “A Quiet Place: Day One” is in third with $21 million grossed over the Fri.-Sun. period, bringing its two-weekend domestic total to $94.4 million. That’s approximately 37% ahead of the $69 million two-weekend total earned by “A Quiet Place — Part II” in 2021 as the spinoff is on pace for a new franchise high.

A24’s “MaXXXine” is in fourth with an opening weekend of $6.7 million, a solid start for a gory, R-rated slasher. Ti West and Mia Goth’s finale to their “X” trilogy has earned a B on CinemaScore, a solid result for a horror film. While skewing towards younger fans of niche horror, it is on pace to pass the $15 million grossed by “X” back in 2022.

Just behind “MaXXXine” is Sony’s “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” with $6.5 million. The Will Smith/Martin Lawrence action film has passed $175 million in domestic grosses and $360 million worldwide.

Outside the top 5, Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” is still struggling to find a wide audience, adding $5.5 million in its second weekend as its domestic total reaches just $22 million against a $100 million production budget that covers both the first installment and “Chapter 2,” set to come out in August.

Finally, Angel Studios’ “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot” opened on July 4th and earned a 4-day opening of $6.7 million. The inspirational film about a church community that adopts all the children in a foster care home specifically for victims of child trafficking.

While it is unlikely to match the breakout success of Angel Studios’ $250 million grosser “Sound of Freedom” last year, “Sound of Hope” will be a theatrical hit as it holds a reported budget of $8.5 million.

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