Minions & Monsters Earns Worst Box Office Debut Of The Entire Franchise Despite Record-Breaking RT Score (Domestic Top 5)

Minions & Monsters has broken opposite franchise records critically and commercially during its opening weekend.

The movie, which debuted midweek on July 1 ahead of the Independence Day holiday in the United States, is the third Minions movie and the seventh overall theatrical installment in the smash-hit Despicable Me franchise. It follows the Minions trying to make a monster movie in Hollywood in 1927, leading to pure physical comedy chaos as they search for the perfect real-life monster. Ahead of the movie’s release, critics’ glowing Minions & Monsters reviews earned it a stellar 91% score that marked the best of the franchise, beating the No. 2 movie, 2010’s Despicable Me (80%), by 11%.

Per Variety, as of Sunday morning, Minions & Monsters is projected to earn a 3-day total of $36 million at the domestic box office over the traditional weekend and a 5-day holiday weekend total of $64.5 million. While this total is still enough for the movie to take No. 1 at the box office over Toy Story 5, knocking the Pixar hit down during its third weekend, it sees the sequel earning what is by far the lowest 3-day opening weekend of the entire seven-film franchise (without even adjusting for inflation), falling considerably below the original Despicable Me‘s $56.4 million.

Minions & Monsters is also set to earn the worst 5-day opening weekend of the franchise among the titles that similarly had their debuts fall on long holiday weekends, namely Despicable Me 3 ($99 million) and Minions: The Rise of Gru ($123.1 million). Below, see a breakdown of the box office performance of the Despicable Me movies:

Although the franchise has had mildly diminishing returns since it peaked in the mid-2010s with two billion-dollar titles, the debut of 2026’s Minions & Monsters presents an unexpectedly huge, potentially catastrophic drop. However, it could still become a success on its own terms.

The movie’s reported budget is $85 million (which is middling for the franchise, which typically ranges between $70 and $100 million). Because Hollywood blockbusters often need to earn back two and a half times their budgets, this could place the movie’s estimated break-even point somewhere around $212.5 million. Even though it hit this record low, if it has a similar trajectory as the second-best-reviewed movie in the franchise, Despicable Me, it could eventually climb to $370.7 million by the end of its run, more than clearing that number.

Nevertheless, if these returns continue to diminish at this astonishing rate, this could mean that the next installment in the franchise will be an outright flop. However, it seems likely that the franchise will regroup and return with a new Despicable Me installment that officially reunites the Minions with Gru (their master from the Despicable Me timeline), could potentially harness nostalgia to help boost that movie’s box office back to the franchise’s typical numbers.

All in all, Minions & Monsters is yet another lukewarm debut in what has turned out to be a consistently disappointing summer at the domestic box office. While movies like Toy Story 5 and Scary Movie have been successful, the majority of the season’s tentpole blockbusters have had a tepid to downright hostile reception in theaters, including Supergirl, Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, and Masters of the Universe.

This Weekend’s Domestic Box Office Top 5

Below, see the full domestic Top 5 chart for the weekend:

The only other new release to grace the Top 5 is the George Washington biopic Young Washington, which took advantage of the Fourth of July semiquincentennial celebration to debut at No. 3. As for the previous weekend’s top movies, Toy Story 5 has floated down from No. 1 to No. 2 with a not-bad 56% drop while Supergirl is crashing and burning, falling from No. 2 to No. 4 with a 74% drop that marks the third biggest for a movie based on superhero comics (behind The Marvels and Joker: Folie à Deux).

Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is holding fast at No. 5 with a week-on-week drop of just 33% while the smash-hit horror movie Obsession falls from No. 3 to No. 6 and Jackass: Best and Last falls from No. 4 to No. 8. Obsession, which is in its eighth weekend and is now available on VOD, has dropped more than 30% for the first time since its debut (45%, to be precise).

While Minions & Monsters is failing to set the box office on fire, July has some potential huge hits coming to theaters to make up for it, including the live-action Moana remake, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day. However, if Moana or Spider-Man similarly see diminishing returns for their franchises, the summer could go truly off the rails.

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Release Date

June 24, 2026

Runtime

90 minutes

Producers

Chris Meledandri, Bill Ryan

Cast

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  Trey Parker

  Goomi (voice)

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  Henry / James / Ed / Dick / The Minions (voice)