Every 2020 Movie That Could Make A Billion Dollars

4. Minions: The Rise Of Gru

Minions Jail
Universal

The Despicable Me franchise is constantly overlooked when it comes to box-office results. The first film in the series made almost $550 million worldwide, while the sequel came frustratingly close to a billion, topping out at a huge $970 million.

However, Despicable Me 3 managed it - as did 2015's Minions. This is now a billion-dollar series, and 2020's Minions sequel is in a very good position because of that.

One of the key reasons this franchise has been so successful is because Illumination kept the time between films as short as it possibly could. While animated sequels commonly take five or more years to arrive, the studio cranked out Despicable Me movies in 2010, 2013, 2015 and 2017. Consequently, the Minions craze has never fully died down, and the kids that shot Despicable Me 3 to a billion dollars three years ago will surely go crazy for another helping of weird yellow tic-tacs.

While the Minions have faded in popularity a little since their first appearance, the fact that they've been re-injected into the pop-culture bubble every couple of years means that they're still bankable characters, and with The Rise of Gru obviously featuring Gru in a major role - another selling point - it's basically Despicable Me 4.

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Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!