Despicable Me 4: The Box Office Performance the Entertainment Press Doesn't Want to Talk About

These days the entertainment press is absolutely ecstatic about the box office performance of Inside Out 2--a genuine, massive, commercial success of exactly the kind they were desperately looking for, a brand-name exploiting big-budget sequel to a past animated hit that to them seems to prove, yes, Hollywood can go on making money by doing business as usual. (Indeed, to the extent that some reviewers have found the film mediocre this is probably a comfort to those taking this view--because it is a lot easier to make "mediocre" than "brilliant," and it is mediocre that they want and need to be told is still salable.)

That press is rather less ecstatic about the performance of another brand-name big-budget animated sequel, Despicable Me 4. Deadline may sound as if it is bullish on the movie when it advertises Despicable Me as having become the "12th biggest" franchise ever worldwide. Still, the latest film's having (as the same headline reports) as of its fourth weekend taken in $632 million worldwide is not very impressive next to the $1.5 billion Pixar's movie has scored--and for that matter, the grosses of the previous Despicable Me films. The original film took in $252 million domestically and about twice that globally, but this comes to $362 million stateside when we account for inflation--versus the $290 million the latest has made while running out of steam, all as the international earnings prove no more ebullient, such that Gru's latest adventure might not match the nearly $800 million ($782 million) the first grossed in 2010 comes to in June 2024 dollars. And of course, the real benchmark in most minds is not the first film in the series but the sequels that followed--Despicable Me 2 and Despicable Me 3--and the tie-in Minion movies, Minions and the prequel Minions: The Rise of Gru. In today's terms the two Despicable Me movies and Minions blew way past the billion-dollar mark ($1.3 billion in the case of the two Despicable Me movies, the $1.5 billion mark in the case of Minions!), while the second Minions movie just missed it.

The First Five Despicable Me Franchise Films, Worldwide and Domestic Grosses (Current and June 2024 U.S. Dollars, CPI-Adjusted; Adjusted Figures in Parentheses)

Despicable Me (2010)--Worldwide--$543 Million ($782 Million); Domestic--$252 Million ($362 Million)

Despicable Me 2 (2013)--Worldwide--$971 Million ($1.305 Billion); Domestic--$368 Million ($495 Million)

Minions (2015)--Worldwide--$1.159 Billion ($1.525 Billion); Domestic--$336 Million ($442 Million)

Despicable Me 3 (2017)--Worldwide--$1.035 Billion ($1.326 Billion); Domestic--$265 Million ($339 Million)

Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022)--Worldwide--$940 Million ($998 Million); Domestic--$370 Million ($393 Million)

Should Despicable Me 4 manage to struggle up to the $780 million mark the original attained it would still confirm a trend of declining grosses for the franchise when examined alongside these other films--domestically, internationally and globally. In that Hollywood and its courtiers in the entertainment press have a reminder of the reality of the franchise fatigue that conflicts with their narrative of business being on the up and up and not having to change a thing about what they are doing--which is exactly what they are studiously ignoring as they shout louder and louder about the far more comforting performance of Inside Out 2.