After releasing early in Australia last weekend, Universal/Illumination’s Minions: The Rise Of Gru is looking groovy at the international box office, adding $14.6M in 39 new offshore market openings across Wednesday and Thursday. Coupled with Oz’s first week, the running offshore cume through yesterday is $22.5M. A further 21 markets open today including the UK and Spain.
The origins story from directors Kyle Balda, Brad Ableson and Jonathan Del Val is already seeing strong results in several hubs with the biggest animation opening day of all time in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Cyprus, Czech Republic and Israel.
Australia boogied to great mid-weeks and entered frame 2 yesterday with a $1.4M Thursday — an incredible +303% on the opening Thursday last week. The market has now cumed $7.9M, ahead of Minions (+45%), and Despicable Me 3 (+59%) at the same point.
Latin America is also digging the 1970s-set take on how Gru and the crew got together with Mexico debuting to $1.5M across 920 locations and 4,053 screens, taking 60% of the market share. Including previews this brings the cume through Thursday to $3.2M.
Brazil bowed on Thursday to $500K across 732 locations and 2,012 screens. TROG nabbed the No.2 opening day for an animated film during the pandemic. And Argentina kicked off with $400K for the biggest launch of an Illumination animation in terms of box office (which in recent years has been highly boosted by inflation). In terms of admissions, the opening day is the second biggest for Illumination, only below Minions.
The Middle East grossed a combined $1.3M through Thursday from 228 locations and 709 screens.
Germany got in on the action on Thursday with $600K, giving Gru the No. 1 spot at 698 locations and across 1,359 screens. The day was worth 50% of the market share.
Indonesia, following sneaks on Tuesday and a $600K opening on Wednesday (which was the Despicable Me franchise’s best-ever and the 2nd biggest animation opening day of all time), added another $500K on Thursday. The film has cumed $1.2M so far which is above all previous entries in the series at the same point.
Israel’s Thursday opening was $400K — as noted above, the biggest animation opening day ever — taking 80% of business. The film played across 38 locations and on 90 screens. All were sell-outs. In the market, the local team captured teen audiences with TikTok stunt “Minions in Suits” (ie: going to see the movie wearing a suit) making a splash as user-generated videos went viral and with kids competing on who was buying more tickets.
Czech Republic’s Thursday start was $300K, achieving the biggest animation opening day ever. Thursday was the end of the school year, so the timing was strategically fortuitous and word of mouth is great.
Philippines opened at No.1 on Wednesday with $89K for the top Hollywood animated opening of the pandemic.
The overseas projection on TROG was $70M+ coming into the session and so far signs are positive. We’ll know more once we see how the UK performs and will update throughout the weekend.