Following Toy Story 5’s record-breaking opening last month, another long-running animated franchise, Illumination’s Minions & Monsters, is falling short of expectations at the North American box office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The movie is eyeing a 5-day $63.5 million start, which is a far cry from its expected $80 million debut.<\/p>\n
The long Independence Day weekend is always a bit of a box office anomaly, and the latest Minions movie is on track for a so-so\u00a0$38.5 million 3-day haul. This marks both the lowest 5-day and 3-day debut for a movie in the Minions or Despicable Me franchises, suggesting the novelty might be wearing off with these characters.<\/p>\n
This marks the third time Illumination has opened one of these movies over the July 4 weekend. However,\u00a02013’s Despicable Me 2 ($143 million),\u00a02024’s Despicable Me 4 ($122.6 million), and\u00a02022’s Minions: The Rise of Gru ($123 million) all performed considerably better.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Back to Toy Story 5, it moves to second place with an estimated $30 million 3-day weekend, taking its domestic cume to $365.3 million by Sunday. In third place is Angel Studios’\u00a0Young Washington, which is beating expectations with a projected $16 million to $17 million weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then, in fourth, we have DC Studios’ Supergirl. Things are not looking up for the movie, which will gross $10 million this weekend, a colossal 73% drop from its opening. That’s not as bad as\u00a0Joker: Folie \u00e0 Deux’s 81% decline, but it is in the same ballpark as The Flash, which stumbled at the box office, despite James Gunn’s promise that it was among the greatest movies ever made.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By Sunday, it will have reached\u00a0$48.8 million in the U.S., making it one of the biggest superhero movie box office flops in recent memory. At a time when superheroes are no longer untouchable in theaters, blockbusters like this and Captain America: Brave New World do the genre no favours.<\/p>\n
Rounding out the top five is\u00a0Disclosure Day, with an estimated\u00a0$5.6 million weekend for a running cume by Sunday of\u00a0$104.8 million.<\/p>\n
“Bad writing, gratuitous cameos, and uninspired visuals take us back to the bad old days of the DCEU in Supergirl, a showcase for the super-talented Milly Alcock, but Kryptonite to anyone who likes good superhero movies,”\u00a0we wrote in one of our reviews<\/a>.<\/p>\n