‘Minions & Monsters’ Just Made Blockbuster History For All The Wrong Reasons This Summer

Summer moviegoing in 2026 has already delivered its fair share of surprises, and not all of them have come from the films everyone expected to dominate. Independence Day weekend usually guarantees a handful of box office fireworks, with family-friendly franchises leading the charge into the busiest stretch of the season.

This year, the animated giants of the summer found themselves fighting an unusually tough crowd. Between a packed holiday calendar, ongoing World Cup matches, and a heat dome blanketing large parts of the country, theater attendance became a much harder sell than studios had hoped for.

That difficulty showed up in the numbers for Illumination’s ‘Minions & Monsters,’ which pulled in an estimated 36.4 million dollars over its traditional three-day frame, according to Deadline. That figure has now surpassed Warner Bros and DC’s ‘Supergirl,’ which opened to 37.1 million dollars just a week earlier, as the lowest three-day opening of the summer for a major blockbuster release.

The seventh installment in the Despicable Me and Minions franchise has earned 61.4 million dollars domestically since its Wednesday debut, marking the weakest five-day opening in the series’ history. That number falls well short of the 80 million dollar target Universal was hoping for heading into the holiday frame, and it lands far below the results posted by the franchise’s two most recent entries.

For comparison, ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’ opened to 123.1 million dollars over the same holiday stretch in 2022, while ‘Despicable Me 4’ brought in 122.6 million dollars in 2024. Even the very first ‘Despicable Me’ film back in 2010 managed to top the new film’s three-day total, pulling in 56.3 million dollars without adjusting for inflation.

What makes the underperformance particularly striking is that ‘Minions & Monsters’ arrives with the best critical reception the franchise has ever received. The film holds a 90 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, edging out the original ‘Despicable Me’ as the best-reviewed entry in the series, and it earned an A minus grade on CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences.

David A. Gross, who publishes the box office newsletter FranchiseRe, offered a blunt explanation for the disconnect between quality and turnout, telling Variety that audiences are showing fatigue with the franchise even as the film itself remains strong. He added that the movie will still be profitable despite the domestic stumble.

The film, directed by series co-creator Pierre Coffin, follows the Minions as they stumble into 1920s Hollywood and accidentally unleash a wave of movie monsters while trying to make their own horror picture. It was produced on an estimated 85 million dollar budget, putting its break-even point in the range of 212.5 million dollars worldwide based on typical industry multipliers.

International audiences have been considerably kinder to the film than domestic ones. ‘Minions & Monsters’ has already crossed the 100 million dollar mark overseas, pushing its global cume north of 159 million dollars after just its second wide international frame, according to Deadline. The franchise has historically leaned on overseas markets for the bulk of its earnings, and this release looks to be following that same pattern.

Universal domestic distribution chief Jim Orr struck an optimistic tone about the film’s trajectory, telling Deadline the studio expects a long and lucrative run for the movie throughout the rest of the summer. Whether that plays out domestically remains to be seen, though the film’s stronger-than-usual reviews could help it hold better than past entries as the weeks go on.

‘Minions & Monsters’ still easily claimed the top spot at the domestic box office over the holiday frame, beating out Disney and Pixar’s ‘Toy Story 5’ in its third weekend of release. It also comfortably outpaced ‘Supergirl,’ which suffered a brutal second weekend collapse after its own disappointing debut just seven days earlier.

With several more major releases still to come this summer, including ‘The Odyssey’ and ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ all eyes will be on whether the domestic box office can shake off its recent slump. Do you think ‘Minions & Monsters’ can bounce back domestically as the summer rolls on? Share your thoughts in the comments.