Despicable Me 4, the sixth film in the beloved Universal Pictures franchise, has officially arrived on digital platforms before landing on Peacock and Netflix in the future. Learn how to watch Despicable Me 4 from the comfort of your home below.
The sequel film follows the 2022 spinoff Minions: The Rise of Gru. In the next chapter, the former supervillain, his wife Lucy, and their daughters, Margo, Edith, and Agnes, welcome a new member to the Gru family, Gru Jr. Gru encounters a nemesis, Maxime Le Mal, and his femme fatale girlfriend Valentina, so the family is forced to go on the run. Their plan is threatened when their new neighbor, Poppy, recognizes Gru.
Kristen Wiig, Miranda Cosgrove, Steve Coogan, Pierre Coffin, Dana Gaier, and Madison Polan returned for the latest installment. Joey King, Sofia Vergara, Chloe Fineman, and Chris Renaud are also part of the star-studded voice cast.
Despicable Me 4 has had an impressive run at the box office, earning more than $752 worldwide and $313 million domestically, according to Box Office Mojo. (The sequel has already outperformed both Despicable Me and Despicable Me 3 in domestic sales.) The Despicable Me and Minions franchise is now the highest-grossing animated franchise of all time, passing $5 billion worldwide.
Ready to watch Despicable Me 4 at home? Find out where the family-friendly film can be streamed now.
Despicable Me 4 is available to stream on video-on-demand sites like Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango At Home, Google Play Movies, and YouTube. The animated film can be purchased for $29.99 or rented for $19.99 (for a 48-hour period). The digital version also includes two mini movies.
Despicable Me 4 will also make its way to Peacock and Netflix thanks to a multi-year deal signed between Universal and Netflix. The film will likely be streaming on Peacock approx. three to four months after its theatrical release. Despicable Me 4 will then head to Netflix for the middle ten months and then exclusively on Peacock for the last four months.
Check out an estimated streaming release schedule for Despicable Me 4 below.
Want to watch all the movies in the Despicable Me and Minions franchise? Here’s where to stream the animated films in order of release date.
Watch the official trailer below.
After a start to August that has seen the movie continue its sustained success in theaters, Despicable Me 4 has now overtaken a huge Pixar classic to enter the Top 20 Animated Movies of All Time at the domestic box office. That classic is Up, which has a total domestic taking of $293 million, compared to Despicable Me 4's $314 million. This comes after a rise in ticket sales following a late July dip under $3 million for the first time since the sequel's release. Since August 2, Despicable Me 4 has seen an increase in fortune, with each day producing over $3 million and sealing the movie's rightful place in the Daily Top 5 Box Office lists.
Next up to challenge in the aforementioned Top 20 is Shrek the Third, which sits only $8 million ahead of Despicable Me 4, suggesting that the 2024 hit will soon catch up to the Chris Miller threequel. Despicable Me 4 also has three of its own in its sights, with Minions, Despicable Me 2, and Minions: The Rise of Gru all ahead of it on this list. The front-runner of these is The Rise of Gru, which sits in an impressive thirteenth place on $370 million domestically. Whether Despicable Me 4 will catch any of its predecessors is unknown, although both The Rise of Gru and Despicable Me 2 might just be out of reach. On the other hand, the first Minions is only $22 million ahead, so, unless Despicable Me 4's VOD release slows it down, there's a good chance it might snatch its place in the list.
Whilst it's been a successful year for Despicable Me 4 and Illumination, another animation company has fared even stronger at the Box Office in Pixar's Inside Out 2. Officially, the movie is now on over $1.5 billion globally, perching atop many a prestigious list, including the very one Despicable Me 4 has just entered at twentieth. With a domestic total of over $626 million, it is unlikely any other animation will overtake it, at least for many years.
In a year where live-action movies began with a stuttered start at the summer Box Office, animation came in with Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4 and revived the industry, with theater-goers everywhere suddenly enthused to buy tickets. This success has subsequently been sustained and now moved into an August set to be dominated by the hotly-anticipated Deadpool & Wolverine which has already amassed over $800 million.
Despicable Me 4 has officially entered the Top 20 Animated Movies of All Time at the domestic box office. You can still just about catch the movie in theaters right now.
Gru and his family are back, welcoming a new member, Gru Jr., who causes chaos at home. Facing a new nemesis, Maxime Le Mal, and his partner Valentina, Gru and his family go on the run.
Despicable Me 4 has become available to watch at home for US fans.
US viewers can rent the movie on Prime for $24.99, or buy for $29.99. A UK digital release date is yet to be confirmed.
Despicable Me 4 continues the story of reformed villain Gru (Steve Carrell) as he is targeted by vengeful former classmate Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell), with his family forced to relocate to a safe house.
The movie earned an unwanted record upon its release – taking one of the lowest Rotten Tomatoes ratings of the series with 55% (since up to 56%), sitting behind Despicable Me 3's 58%. It also equals the rating of the first Minions movie.
The previous entry in the franchise was 2022's Minions: The Rise of Gru, and around the time of its release Carell admitted that he didn't initially understand the Minions.
"When we made the first movie, I thought it turned out great. I was so impressed with what the animators did and what the writers had done, and they created this world that was so unlike anything that I'd seen," he recalled to Digital Spy.
"It was a little darker, a little edgier, there was something different about it. Kids loved it and they loved the Minions for sure. That was a stroke of genius. When they were first described to me, I couldn't for the life of me understand what they were talking about."
However, Carell said when he saw the movie "it completely made sense", adding: "I think the fact that they're all in good fun, there's a kindness that underlies all of it and a decency and a love and a sweetness to it all, and they're funny.
"I think all of those things combined, maybe that's the alchemy, but it's hard to say. You never know when something is going to work and when it's not."
Despicable Me 4 is available to buy and rent digitally now in the US on Amazon, iTunes and Microsoft Store. A UK digital release is yet to be confirmed.
Despicable Me 4, the sixth Minions-oriented movie that continued the series’ absurdly prolific ROI with a $750 million worldwide box office grab (and still counting), is now available to stream on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video. This franchise has already bulldozed $5.2 billion into Universal and Illumination’s coffers, and that’s just ticket-sales money – you’ve surely seen Minion faces on kumquats and snack cakes and other assorted supermarket effluvia, thanks to an endorsement deal-slash-marketing blitz that threatens to blanket the earth every two-to-three years. In other words, ubiquity is this series’ strength. And even though some of us have Had Enough Of This Silliness, the numbers don’t lie, and that’s the reason these movies exist. Oh, and to make children giggle. Can’t forget the children.
The Gist: We open with a brouhaha at Gru’s (Steve Carell) high school reunion. It’s a high school for supervillains, of course, and it stirs the decades-old rivalry between Gru and Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell), stemming from, OF COURSE, a performance of a Culture Club hit at a talent show. But! Gru, who you surely remember from past movies is a reformed villain these days, is undercover for the Anti-Villain League! He captures Maxime and heads home to his family: Wife Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig); their three adopted daughters Edith (Dana Gaier), Agnes (Madison Polan) and Margo (Miranda Cosgrove); baby Gru Jr. (Tara Strong); and countless Minions (all voiced by franchise co-creator Pierre Coffin). There’s a pet goat roaming around, and a group of Minions acts as a perpetually at-the-ready diaper squad for Gru Jr., whipping off a Huggie and firing it out the window and powdering his bum and rediapering him lickety-split, all to the frantic and guitar-and-drum batter of classic Van Halen. As you do.
But a problem happens, as problems are wont to do. Maxime escapes from prison, prompting AVL honchos to put Gru and the fam into a witness protection program. Now, if you’re thinking that a world-famous supervillain who once notoriously burgled the Moon might have a hard time blending into a blandly sunny suburb, well, you’re thinking ahead of the plot, which will get to that, addressing its own ramshackle precariousness. But for now, Gru and everyone moves to the city of Mayflower and into a cruddy little house, the Diaper Squad in tow, while the rest of the Minions are shipped off to the AVL to, presumably and eventually, destroy the place.
This all sets in motion various hijinx and antix that never hold together as a plot, not that anyone ever intended to make a movie that makes sense: Gru meets the neighbors, preppy snobs Perry (Stephen Colbert) and Patsy (Chloe Fineman) and their teen daughter Poppy (Joey King), prompting wackiness at a country-club tennis court. Edith and Agnes square off against a jerk karate instructor. Lucy nearly burns down the salon on her first day as a hairdresser. Poppy recognizes Gru and blackmails him into helping her execute a heist. A Minion is trapped in a vending machine for the entire film. Gru struggles to win the love of Gru Jr. Maxime and his girlfriend Valentina (Sofia Vergara) plot to kidnap Gru Jr. The Minions at the AVL are subjected to an experiment that renders them superpowered Megaminions that very suspiciously resemble a bunch of Marvel characters. And perhaps all this will end with a dance party, but hey, NO SPOILERS, right? Right.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: On multiple levels, and far more so than on previous franchise entries, DM4 conspicuously resembles The Incredibles, which did this type of spoofery far more coherently.
Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Among all the celebs doing asinine accents in these films, I’ve always enjoyed Carell’s pseudo-Slavic tone, which is funny, whimsical and distinctive.
Memorable Dialogue: I know Minionspeak is mostly arglebargle, but I’m pretty sure one of them leapt into a fray while exclaiming, “Suppository!”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: You have to admire the Despicable Mes, for always and without fail aiming for the joke, the joke, the joke. They leave the sentimental slop for other kid movies, and hefty thematics for Pixar. They’re junky of plot, occasionally overbearing, consistently loud and colorful, and essentially about nothing but the pursuit of laughter. It’s a pure, possibly noble, M.O. Nobody’s manipulating you to sob into your Jujyfruits or force-feeding you sentiments about the power of friendship or family togetherness. None of that. What we have here – for the sixth time, I must reiterate – is little yellow vaguely sentient globs chattering and burping, sanitary action-violence, birdshit gags, big fat needle drops and caricature-as-character. Some of it misses, but hopefully, you find six or eight or 12 things to laugh at. Such is the nature of comedy.
And so DM4 is more more more of the same same same, for better or worse worse worse. These films evade criticism by stirring delight in the 12-and-under demographic for 90 minutes at a time, as the laughter of children is UNDENIABLE. As Monsters Inc. taught us, it’s a clean, untapped, renewable energy source. What you, old person, think about it is moot as a very moot thing.
That won’t stop me from writing this very moot paragraph, though. I have a job to do, you know. Are the Minions annoying? Maybe. (My thought: No, they’re fine. Paw Patrol though? THAT’S annoying.) Perhaps, if you squint hard enough, you could find some satire here – family life in suburbia, the struggles in raising children, wearisome tropes of comic book movies (a character pipes up after a Megaminions sighting with the searing-hot line, “I’m sick of superheroes!”, which is about as deep as the pop-cultural commentary gets). Does anyone really care about this stuff? Minions pranking each other? Gru rescuing his baby boy and finally earning his admiration? Not really, and that’s the point. The Despicable Me/Minions franchise has stuck to the same formula for 14 years (!) and as long as the youngs keep chuckling and the money keeps rolling in, it will continue. It functions on those two levels quite well, which is not nothing. Remember, there are many movies out there that work on zero levels. Zero! That’s actually nothing.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Evaporative entertainment has its value.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
