Despicable yet adorable, the Minions came to rescue Italy’s box office.

After sluggish weeks, audiences flocked back to theaters for the animated new entry Minions 2 – The Rise of Gru. The first place debut has earned the Despicable Me prequel a whopping €4,420,898 since its August 18 release day. Added to the €1,526,007 from the three days of previews (Aug. 8-10), the film has reached the €5,928,089 mark in one week of programming. Alone, Minions 2 grossed three times as much as the sum of all the other films on this chart. The excellent start in Italy mirrors what is happening in the rest of the world, where the animated film has totaled €833 million, including €483 million internationally, leading Universal to reach $3 billion.

The Italian box office podium for the weekend finds Jordan Peele’s sci-fi horror Nope dropping to second place after its first-place debut last week, grossing another €251,000 for a total of €724,000. In third place holds out Marvel Studios’ God of Thunder: Thor: Love and Thunder grosses another €190,000 for a total take of €15.5 million.

Top Gun: Maverick continues its run, with nearly 300 thousand euros last week for a total of 12.3 million euros: the film, despite being released in May, continues to have considerable gross and attendance.

The re-release of The Wandering Castle of Howl, with another €159.27 last week, achieved an excellent result, which adds up overall to the receipts obtained by the other Studio Ghibli films released to strengthen the summer period line-up. It is followed by Elvis (€127,000 last week) with €3 million total and Jurassic World – The Domain, which grosses another €90,000 and comes in at €8 million total.

Il pataffio, an Italian new entry, debuted last week with €67,000. The film directed by Francesco Lagi is based on the comic novel of the same name by Luigi Malerba. Set in the Middle Ages, it tells the adventures of a group of soldiers and courtesans headed by Marconte Berlocchio (Lino Musella) and his recent bride Bernarda (Viviana Cangiano). When the group arrives at a remote feud, they come to realize that only peasants unwilling to be ruled live around the ruinous castle. Between profane appetites and sacred languor, ramshackle militia, and poor souls, a tale about freedom, hunger, sex, and power begins. The cast also includes Valerio Mastandrea, Alessandro Gassmann and Giorgio Tirabassi. The weekend of August 18-21 in Italy grossed a total box office of €5,393,172, significantly better than the previous weekend’s €1,179,551. 

Next week will kick off the Venice Film Festival. Among the most anticipated films is Siccità (Drought) by Paolo Virzì, with a cast that includes Silvio Orlando, Valerio Mastandrea, Monica Bellucci, and Vinicio Marchioni. The film, in theaters Sept. 29, is set in a Rome devastated by the absence of rain for three years. The lack of water disrupts rules and habits, and in the city dying of thirst and restrictions a chorus of characters, young and old, victims and profiteers, move about in search of redemption.