With an incredible start for an animated film, Minions took in an excellent $6.2M from its Thursday start. That sets it up for one of the highest debuts for an animated film ever, perhaps only behind the adjusted starts for Shrek 2 and Shrek The Third with around $140M each. Minions will probably wind up around $125M for the weekend.

A good comparison is Inside Out, which took in $3.7M from its Thursday shows, though that didn’t have the built in fanbase that would propel it to such heights. If it did exactly the same as that film, it would open to $155M which doesn’t seem very likely. Despicable Me 2 took in $140M over a five day Fourth of July weekend, so topping that total gross in just a weekend would be absolutely incredible.

Also opening was horror film The Gallows, with $900K. Now you probably assumed the budget was around $1M, similar to Unfriended, or maybe $3-$5M like the Paranormal Activity films. Nope. The film had a budget of just $100,000. Yes, you read that right. A film that cost $100K made it into over 2,700 theaters. So when I said basically any result would be fine, I didn’t realize just how cheap this movie was. If it follows the same route as Insidious: Chpater 3, it would end up with around $12M for the weekend.

Low budget sci-fi film Self/Less also opened but didn’t report Thursday night numbers.

Updated Predictions

1. Minions – $125M

2. The Gallows – $11.9M