Steve Carell’s New Film Has Acheived A Huge Record
He's got the golden ticket!
Animated movies have faced unique challenges ever since the global pandemic hit. As careful as many of us have been about going to the theater, parents have had to be even more cautious. Not only do they have to worry about their own safety, but there are their children to consider; children, we should remember, who would have to wait longer than most to get vaccinated. As a result, animated films have had a rougher time than most, but Steve Carell’s new movie Minions: The Rise of Gru is proving to be a record-breaking exception.
As reported by Deadline, the worldwide gross for Minions: The Rise of Gru crossed the $300 million mark this past weekend, thus far bringing in $300.9 million. That makes the Steve Carell flick the very first animated film since COVID-19 changed so much for all of us to cross the $300 million threshold. The last animated movie to cross that mark was Frozen II in November 2019 which, according to Box Office Mojo, ended its theatrical run with a remarkable $1.5 billion to show for itself.
Deadline notes that Minions: The Rise of Gru has now joined the relatively short list of Covid era films to make more than $300 million. The five others are Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Top Gun: Maverick, The Batman, and Jurassic World Dominion. But the movie is not only showing record numbers by Covid-era standards, but at its current rate the Steve Carell flick could get a similar return as 2013’s Despicable Me 2, which so far — ending its run with $336 million — is the highest grossing entry in the franchise.
This is just one of the records that the Steve Carell voiced flick has blown past. The Rise of Gru became the highest grossing movie on the July 4th weekend in cinema history, taking in $129 million. The record had previously been held by 2011’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon with $115.9 million. At the time The Hollywood Reporter predicted the Minions prequel’s success might be a sign of better things to come overall for animated features. The only other big animated success story since 2019 is Sony’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
Steve Carell will soon be appearing in a much different kind of project. Playing hard against type, Carell plays a psychotherapist who is turned into a hostage by the man he’s treating in The Patient. The Americans writers Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields penned the series, which stars Domhnall Gleeson (About Time) as the serial killer who wants Carell to cure him or die trying. The show also stars David Alan Grier (Joe Pickett), Andrew Leeds (Barry), Linda Emond (Succession), Laura Niemi (This Is Us), and Alex Rich (GLOW). You can see a trailer for the upcoming FX thriller series below.
Not to mention, John Krasinski will reunite with his old Dunder Mifflin boss in an upcoming fantasy comedy. Written, directed by, and starring Krasinski; Imaginary Friends is about a man who can somehow speak to other people’s abandoned imaginary friends. Very little info has been released about the film so we don’t know who Steve Carell is playing. But he will be joined by Ryan Reynolds (Free Guy), Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag), Fiona Shaw (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), and Louis Gossett Jr. (Iron Eagle).
