Minions 2 made 128 million dollars opening weekend in the US.

The highest July 4th weekend release ever, speaking the record set by Transformers 3 in 2011 at 116 million.

Globally, the box office is also even higher at 219 million for one weekend.

Which this isn’t that shocking, seeing how Minions/Despicable Me is one of the highest grossing franchises ever, making 8.7 billion dollars since it released in 2010.

Big question though was why this movie did so well, where Lightyear failed?

For animated films, Disney has eight of the top ten highest grossing films of all time, with the only two in the top ten which aren’t Disney being the Despicable Me/Minions movies at 1.1 billion and 1 billion at the box office.

Clearly Minions is popular, but it still doesn’t explain the Lightyear issue.

Toy Story is 2 of the top 10 highest earning animated films ever and each film outperformed the other at the box office.

Trying to figure this out, I want to look a little at the financials of the Minions franchise for how it made so much money.

For Minions 2015, it made 336 million in the US, but made 823 million outside the US, for the 1.1 billion total.

For Despicable Me 3, it also did well internationally in 2018, making 770 million outside the US and 264 million in the US.

Comparing that, the most recent Toy Story movie, which also broke a billion made 639 million internationally, but 434 million in the US.

This could suggest the first issue with Lightyear, where the Toy Story franchise is more dependent on the US audience, where ticket sales are down, while internationally, it’s doing okay.

That being said though, it still doesn’t answer the issue Lightyear had in the US, where it opened at only 51 million in the US, which is less than half of Minions earnings.

I looked at that and I think the big issue there was competition.

Jurassic World 3 came out on June 10th.
Lightyear came out on June 17th.

While Jurassic World is clearly for a bit older of a demographic, it is a blockbuster parents with kids over the age of eight feel comfortable taking their kids to see, which likely caused a problem.

Which still isn’t the biggest reason, but I think the fall of Lightyear ultimately just had to do with it being an unwanted idea.

Minions 2 was a direct follow up of a movie which already made a billion dollars.

Lightyear was a spinoff, completely detached from the franchise, to the point it has a new lead actor and the older lead actor bashed the movie.

That is really the final thought I have on this, where Lightyear might have been the spinoff Disney thought people wanted, while Minions was the spinoff kids actually asked for.