Illumination and Universal’s Despicable Me 4 handily crossed the six-century mark at the global box office this week, now with $632M through Thursday. The latest in the series has pushed the worldwide running total for the Despicable Me/Minions franchise to $5.3B, overtaking Transformers ($5.295B) and the Avatar movies ($5.268B). This puts the franchise at No. 12 on the all-time global chart.
As we reported earlier this month, the latest installment from Gru and the gang helped propel the Despicable Me/Minions films across the $5B mark worldwide, making it the first animated franchise ever to reach the milestone. It was already, and remains, the biggest animated franchise of all time globally.
After beginning early overseas play in select markets on June 20, the Chris Renaud-directed and Patrick Delage-co-directed DM4 has continued a staggered release pattern. This past frame added Japan with the biggest studio opening of the year. Korea joined the fun on Wednesday this week, and Italy is still to release on August 21.
The running domestic cume is $277M through Thursday while the international box office total currently stands at $355M, also through Thursday.
The Top 5 overseas markets to date are: China ($36.2M), Mexico ($34.3M), UK ($$28.4M), Australia ($26.2M) and Brazil ($20.5M).
News of the latest box office achievement follows Universal’s recent announcement that Minions 3 has been dated for release on June 30, 2027. It will be directed by Academy Award nominee Pierre Coffin, the filmmaker behind the first three Despicable Me films and the first Minions movie. Illumination’s founder and CEO Chris Meledandri will produce as he has for each film of the franchise.