“Minions 2” broke a box office record with help from nostalgia-driven Gen Z flash mobs
Minions: The Rise of Gru (Minions 2), Universal Pictures’ latest entry in the Despicable Me franchise, is the most successful July 4th movie opening ever, after bringing in over $125 million in the US and Canada over the weekend. That beats the previous record held by Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, which collected $115 million during the same holiday-weekend period in 2011.
Releases from the franchise have become reliable multimillion dollar tentpole events, but the the record-breaking Minions 2 has had additional help from a social media movement—called GentleMinions—that is completely unconnected to the Hollywood studio behind the film.
It has put Hollywood on notice that the power of platforms like TikTok and Reddit cannot be ignored when film marketing budgets are being allocated. There’s no guarantee that Hollywood will be able to directly influence or even harness the new power of the meme crowd, but supporting it will likely become a major new lever in the toolbox of most major movie studios.
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