July 4th week 2024, Wednesday dispatch

Happy 3rd of July to everyone. Since we’ve got films opening today, tomorrow and Friday you get to hit the delete button read me three times this week. Because pretty much everyone is off work tomorrow, today plays a lot like a Friday. 4th of July is a weird movie going day; since it’s a holiday, it’s pretty good, but there’s a swing in how good it is depending on the weather. If we get rain, it’s like having a money printer at the box-office. But if it’s really nice weather coast to coast, it’s not that great.

Despicable Me 4 - No signs of this IP running out of gas today, but there’s an interesting aspect to watch here. Two years ago, Universal struck gold with a wildly effective social media campaign that encouraged young people to dress in suits and go see Minions: The Rise of Gru. That ‘GentleMinions’ movement created an increased level of tagalongs and sent the grosses soaring. It will be interesting to see if that over performance two years ago grew this IP and if those suit wearing consumers come back again this time. At this point it looks like a few of them came back, this is running about 75% of Gru, but Gru opened on a Friday so this edition should be behind Gru today. As of now, I’d say this looks like a day in the mid/high 20’s.

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Reply 1, the reader · 2024-07-03

how real was the GentleMinions movement? I’d forgotten about it, but now I wanna revisit it. Hope all is well with you!

Reply 2, the writer · 2024-07-03

It really made a difference, maybe 20%, it was huge. I’m good.