Minions 3 Finally Revealed With 2027 Release Date
The Minions are coming back, thanks to writer Brian Lynch and director Pierre Coffin.
Minions 3 is officially happening. The sequel will arrive in theaters on June 30, 2027, Illumination announced today. That date puts it on track to be the big July 4 weekend opener -- something that makes a lot of sense, given that Despicable Me 4 just earned over $200 million in its global opening. The movie will be written by Brian Lynch (Minions, Big Helium Dog) and directed by Oscar nominee Pierre Coffin, a director on the first three Despicable Me movies and Minions. The film will be produced by Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri and by Bill Ryan.
There are no details on Minions 3 yet, but it seems safe to assume that it will once again involve the Minions in the past, helping Young Gru (Steve Carell) get into some shenanigans. On the other hand, some fans online have already started to speculate about the possibility of moving the Minions movies up into the present day and starting to focus them on Poppy Prescott (Joey King), who first appears as an aspiring supervillain in Despicable Me 4.
Coffin, in addition to directing, will provide Minions voices, which he has done since they debuted in 2010's Despicable Me. Variety first reported the news.
The franchise has been a pop culture phenomenon since then, closing in on $5 billion in total box office. The last Minions movie, Minions: The Rise of Gru, debuted at $125 million at the domestic box office and ended up making $939 million worldwide. Last week's Despicable Me 4 earned $122 million domestically, and is one of only a handful of big-budget tentpoles released this year to make a big splash.
The first Minions movie saw the gibberish-talking, indestructible goofballs working for Scarlett Overkill (Sandra Bullock), the world's first woman supervillain. By the end of the movie, she declared war on her own minions and lost -- leading them right to the doorstep of a very young Gru. In the second film, the Minions helped Gru and his favorite supervillain, Wild Knuckles (Alan Arkin), in a battle with a team of supervillains bent on killing them.
Lynch also wrote both Secret Life of Pets movies, Hop, and has story credits on Minions: The Rise of Gru and Puss in Boots. In addition to his work on the Despicable Me franchise, Coffin serves as the series director for the French animated series Pat et Stanley.
