Audiences are not going bananas over the latest Minions movie. In fact, they may be saying “Poopaye!” to those weird yellow critters once and for all pretty soon.
That’s because the latest Minions sequel, Minions & Monsters just had the worst opening weekend not only in Minions history, but also in the entire seven film cinematic universe that also includes Despicable Me, which the strangely immortal, gibberish-speaking goofs were originally spun off from.
And Minions & Monsters didn’t just do a little less well than the other Minions movie. Its $36.4 million three-day gross is less than a third of what the first Minions made in its opening weekend back in 2015.
(That first Minions, by the way, wound up grossing more than $1.1 billion worldwide. $1.1 million! For bananas and poopaye! Amazing.)
READ MORE: The Worst Movies of 2026 So Far
Over the long July 4th weekend, Minions & Monsters grossed $61.4 million. Again, that number does not make for flattering comparisons to earlier films. Minions: The Rise of Gru made $122 million in its first days of release back in 2022. A lot has changed in four years, it seems.
Here’s the full opening weekend box office ranking for the Despicable Me/Minions franchise:
- Minions – $115.7 million
- Minions: The Rise of Gru – $107.0 million
- Despicable Me 2 – $83.5 million
- Despicable Me 4 – $75.0 million
- Despicable Me 3 – $72.4 million
- Despicable Me – $56.3 million
- Minions & Monsters – $36.4 million
According to Box Office Mojo, that $36.4 million also puts Minions & Monsters on the low end of opening weekends for every animated movie released by Illumination Entertainment. Only Sing, Sing 2, and Migration had lower opening weekends across all their franchises.
Illumination had a much better start to 2026, when their Super Mario Galaxy Movie became the top-grossing title of the year in U.S. theaters. As of this writing, it still stands at #1 of 2026 thus far. That movie is almost certainly going to get another sequel at some point. As for the Minions … those hoping for more of their adventures might be in for a monstrous wait.
