![]() ![]() Part of the fun of GentleMinions is going out with friends: I doubt putting on your homecoming suit and taking a video of yourself sitting on your couch alone for the latest streaming debut would gain the same traction. But movie studios that haven’t turned solely to streaming would do well to watch the reaction of their target audience on social media. Between long-rising ticket prices and the COVID pandemic, there’s been a lot of reasons not to go to the theater. Now, I’m not saying that TikTok trends are the key to saving theatrical moviegoing. Why People Are Horny for Dune 2’s Most Freaky-Looking Character ![]() I Know the Real Reason Viewers Love It So Much. It’s Time for the Feds to Crack Down on Pro Sports’ Most Absurd MonopolyįX’s New Historical Epic Is a Runaway Hit. I’m not sure what spurred the utter contempt for Morbius, but between a hypersaturated superhero movie market and disdain for Jared Leto (and his infamously cringey method acting, which he continued in the most petulant manner on the Morbius set by making the crew push him in a wheelchair to the bathroom), Sony would have benefited by watching early reactions online and changing their marketing accordingly. ![]() The difference between the Morbius flop memes and the GentleMinions trend is that Sony mistook ironic fondness for the real thing. I was 9 years old when the first movie came out, and although it wasn’t my favorite movie at the time, Minion mania swept through my extended family like the smelly gas fired from Gru’s fart gun. There might be an element of irony in buying tickets en masse to a kids’ movie as a high schooler, but the Minions have been accompanying Gen Z for basically our whole lives. The GentleMinions trend is popular with teenagers and young adults, who have grown up with the Despicable Me franchise. Part of it has to do with a genuine excitement for Minions. So why has the GentleMinions meme gone in the exact opposite direction? I did my part by not going to see it in theaters, and instead gleefully related every update to my Boomer parents over dinner, where we marveled over the ability of memes to sway the opinions and actions of moviegoers my age. It flopped again, making only $85,000 on its first night back. The entire point of the Morbius memes was to not see the movie, but in June, Sony cluelessly misread the joke and rereleased Morbius to 1,000 theaters in the U.S. ![]() It became the butt of a tidal wave of jokes-people misquoting it, streaming it on Twitch illegally, even compressing the entire movie into a GIF and uploading it to Tumblr. Morbius debuted in April, making less than $40 million on opening weekend and grossed $163.3 million internationally during its initial run. And second, the last time a movie was turned into a meme this year, it didn’t go very well for that movie. First, I felt like I missed the Gen Z memo explaining that Minions were no longer relegated to memes on our moms’ Facebook pages: They’re cool now, not cringe. The popularity of The Rise of Gru was surprising to me for two reasons. Exactly how significant is difficult to say, but the Hollywood Reporter said an “ unusually high” percentage of the audience was between 13 and 17, more than four times the percentage that showed up for Despicable Me 3. Compared with $72.4 million for 2017’s Despicable Me 3, The Rise of Gru’s opening represents a substantial bump, and while it’s closer to the $115 million of the first Minions spinoff movie in 2015, Gru still made more than any movie in the history of the franchise, which leads me to believe that the GentleMinions-and the hype they started on social media-made a significant contribution to ticket sales. Over the holiday weekend, The Rise of Gru made more than $219 million worldwide, vaulting it into the 10 highest-grossing movies of 2022, and breaking the box office record for the Independence Day weekend with $125 million domestic. Minion mania swept through my extended family like the smelly gas fired from Gru’s fart gun.Ĭan we credit the #GentleMinions trend for The Rise of Gru’s success? Compared with other movies in the franchise, it certainly seems to have played a role. ![]()
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