‘Minions’ Milestone: Henchmen Serve Up $500M At International Box Office

Kevin, Stuart and Bob are making their masters very happy. With today’s grosses, Illumination Entertainment and Universal’s Minions is poised to cross the $500M mark at the international box office. Sunday estimates had the Kyle Balda/Pierre Coffin-helmed origins stoy at $497.8M, and actuals now put the offshore cume at $499.4M. Combined with the domestic total of $262.5M, the worldwide booty is $761.8M. The Despicable Me 2 spinoff has been the top movie at the global box office for three consecutive weeks, and has opened No. 1 in 55 territories thus far. It’s another successful collaboration between Universal and Chris Meledandri and his Illumination team.

But it’s not over. Minions still has plenty of gas in the tank with seven more markets to go, including China. The first DM movie never released in the Middle Kingdom and yet DM2 grossed about $53M there in early 2014. Minions travels there on September 13. Other territories still to come are Korea on July 29, Japan on July 31, Slovenia on August 13, Italy on August 27, Turkey on September 14 and Greece on September 24.

DM2 fell just shy of the $1B worldwide box office mark, topping out at $975.2M. Of that, international was $607.1M. Given the continued strong holds and the releases still on deck, there is a good chance Minions gets to $1B in what would be even more of a milestone for both Illumination and Universal (which already has Furious 7 and Jurassic World in that category this year). Comparisons of DM2‘s and Minions‘ races to $500M are somewhat moot given a much different release pattern. For the sake of detail, DM2 reached $500M 14 weeks and three days after the first international release date; Minions is doing so in five weeks and six days.

Other Minions highlights include passing Shrek Forever After ($753.9M) to become the 10th-highest-grossing animated film of all time worldwide and passing Kung Fu Panda 2 ($500.5M) today to become the 10th-highest-grossing animated film internationally.

It boasts the best animated opening weekend of all time in 29 territories including Brazil, France, Mexico, Russia and the UK; is Universal’s biggest opening weekend ever in seven territories; and had the biggest opening weekend of any film of all time in Russia and Venezuela.

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