Universal and Illumination just announced Minions 3, the next chapter in the tiny yellow creatures’ franchise, Variety reported. The news comes after Despicable Me 4 debuted during the 4th of July weekend with $230 million at the worldwide box office.
Minions 3 will be released in cinemas June 30, 2027. The script will be written by Brian Lynch, who wrote the first Minions film and The Secret Life of Pets. Academy Award-nominee Pierre Coffin will direct. Coffin directed the first three Despicable Me movies and the first Minions film. He also voiced the Minions since they debuted in 2010’s Despicable Me. In the first Minions movie, he voiced all 899 Minions.
Get ready for more Minions
The third Minions movie will be produced by Chris Meledandri, founder and CEO of Illumination, and Bill Ryan of The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Since their release in 2010, both the Despicable Me and Minions films have become the biggest animated franchise in history. The movies have collectively grossed almost $5 billion. Minions: The Rise of Gru, released in 2022, broke records when it earned $125 million domestically in its July 4 opening weekend. Despicable Me 4 earned just a few million shy with $122.6 million in its domestic premiere. It’s expected to earn more than $30 million in its second week of release.
Illumination’s 15 feature films have an average gross of an impressive $711 million per movie. Its highest-grossing film is last year’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie with $1.36 billion. The movie is followed by the first Minions film at $1.16 billion and 2017’s Despicable Me 3 at $1.03 billion. All three films are among the 50 highest grossing films of all time. Eight of Illumination’s movies are among the highest-grossing animated films.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie sits at the top of the list while Minions is number seven on the list, with its sequel The Rise of Gru at number 15. Despicable Me 3 is at number 10 while its predecessor is at number 13. The Secret Life of Pets, released in 2016, is at number 20 with $875.46 million. Sing, also in 2016, sits at number 34 with $634.15 million and Despicable Me is number 46 with $543.1 million. Minions is also the highest-grossing prequel in history and the.
Illumination’s record-breaking animated films
The first Minions film was the first animated film not from Disney or Pixar to gross $1 billion at the box office. It’s also the only movie with a budget below $100 million to cross the $1 billion mark globally without a re-release. It took 49 days or seven weeks for the movie to reach $1 billion globally. Minions is also the first Illumination film to reach $100 million in its domestic opening weekend.
In general, animated movies take much longer to create than live-action ones. For the first Minions film, the directors Coffin and Chris Renaud wrote the “gibberish” spoken throughout the movie. Each word translates to an actual word.
The studio’s strategy of releasing their films during the fourth of July weekend in the last seven years has paid off. The rest of Illumination’s films have also performed well at the box office.
Aside from the third Minions movie, the studio also plans to release the as-yet-untitled follow up to The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Its target date is for April 3, 2026. With the success of the franchises and a Minions 3 on the way, there’s a very strong possibility that Despicable Me 5 is either already in development or at least in conversations at Illumination.
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