Jul 1, 2022

-Minions The movie "Minion Crisis," after a phenomenal preview on Thursday, is set for a monstrous opening.

Illumination's "Minions: The Rise of Gru" has had the best preview box office performance of any animated feature film since the Coivd-19 craze began.

The latest installment of "Minions: Princess of the Cursed Desert" played in 3,350 theaters at 2 p.m. Thursday and grossed $10.75 million. This performance is not only a post-pandemic record, but also surpasses the $6.2 million earned by "Minions" in previews in 2015.

According to Forbes' Scott Mendelson, the preview total for "Rise of Grue" is the highest ever for an animated feature film in terms of preview earnings, behind only the CG-animated remake of "The Lion King" ($23 million), "The Incredibles 2" ($18.2 million), "Toy Story 4" ( ($12 million), and "Toy Story 4" ($12 million).

"Minions" Earnings Estimate: The opening weekend box office for "Rise of Gru" could hover between $65 million and $93 million over the extended July 4 holiday weekend, experts suggested earlier this week. By comparison, Pixar's "Lightyear" did less than $51 million in its opening weekend, but the film was facing much stronger competition at the time.

What makes "The Rise of Gru"'s performance hard to deny is that Disney lost its pandemic excuse for "Lightyear's" poor box office performance. The previews of "The Rise of Gru" also seem to suggest that the scattershot opening weekend predictions for the film may have been too conservative.

We will keep an eye on "The Rise of Gru's" July 4th holiday earnings. Meanwhile, let's see what critics have to say about the film.