Final July 4 holiday actuals confirmed Tuesday what the preliminary estimates had indicated: "Minions and Monsters" earned $36 million domestically over three days and $61 million over the five-day holiday period. [2] That is the lowest domestic opening in the franchise's sixteen-year history — behind both "Minions: Rise of Gru" and "Despicable Me 4," which launched to $123 million and $122 million respectively over the same five-day July 4 stretch.

This paper reported Monday on the preliminary franchise-worst figures from the opening holiday weekend. Tuesday's actuals are the filed record.

The film's international performance runs in the other direction. "Minions and Monsters" earned $98 million internationally in its first five days, bringing the worldwide total to $159.8 million against an $85 million production budget. [3] The critical reception complicates the fatigue narrative further: the film holds a 91 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and an A-minus on CinemaScore exit polls — both the best in franchise history. [1]

The domestic miss is a supply-and-demand problem with a specific shape. Toy Story 5 was already at $764 million worldwide, occupying the family audience's emotional bandwidth since its own opening weekend. [1] The July 4 corridor had two animated family tentpoles competing for the same audience in the same heat dome. One of them had been running for weeks. The franchise-low domestic number is not an argument about the Minions franchise's creative quality — the reviews argue the opposite — but about whether Illumination and Universal positioned it correctly against competition they could see coming.

International audiences, who did not have Toy Story 5 running at equivalent scale in all markets, showed up. Domestic audiences, who did, largely did not.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles