Jul 5, 2022

Meme-obsessed teens are driving ticket sales for "Minions": the Rise of the Glue

Boosted by the hottest Tiktok trend of the summer, Illumination's "Minions" opens: Boosted by the hottest Tiktok trend of the summer, Illumination's "Minions: Grue Strikes Back," the biggest opening weekend in history over the four-day Independence Day weekend, grossing $1 It grossed $125.1 million over the four-day Independence Day weekend, the largest opening weekend in history.

News of the box office domination of "Minion's Great Escape from the Phantom Thief" has been all over the industry for the past four days, but aside from its impressive box office performance, what really stands out is that the film attracted a different demographic than expected.

According to exit polling service Posttrak, 34% of "The Rise of Gru's July 4th weekend audience was 13-17 years old, a higher age range than the average for animated feature films. In comparison, the previous film in the franchise, "Despicable Me 3," had only 8% of the audience in the same age group. Furthermore, 89% of the audience for "The Rise of Gru" was under the age of 25, while 25% was under the age of 12.

Forty-nine percent of the audience for "Kaito Gru's Minion Crisis" was male, whereas 45% of the audience for "Despicable Me 3" was male.

In other words, while there is no doubt that young kids are coming to see "Rise of Gru" in theaters, the truth is that teenage males who grew up with the franchise still think "Rise of Gru" is cool, and they and their friends It seems to me that they have found an opportunity for a fun social experience by participating. A seemingly organic online movement, #GentleMinions, has emerged in which large groups of teenagers dressed in Gru-inspired suits attend screenings together.

A major force behind the viral success of "Phantom Thief Grue's Minion Escape" was the film's trending popularity on Tiktok. The official Minions Tiktok account has gained 2 million followers in the past 15 days. The account, as expected, has fully embraced the #GentleMinions movement.

Relishmix, a social media analytics firm that tracks engagement on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and Tiktok, gave "Rising of the Glue" 685.5 million engagements before the film was released before the film's release, giving it a social media universe mark of 685.5 million. According to the company, this number was 73% higher than Lightyear and on par with Incredibles 2.

According to a recent report by Relishmix:

Top engagement was due to 218.8 million views on Youtube and the film's own new Tiktok channel, which received 175.6 million views. Youtube's repost ratio was 28:1, which is above standard; long-lived Facebook with 32.1 million fans and the studios' social networks with 45.2 million are performing well in more key performance indicators. On social, there is nothing but positive buzz for "Rising of the Gru" as fans are excited about the film's release with playful sound effects, tweets, and emojis, just as "Minions" has a preliminary rating of 10 out of 10.