Despicable Me 2 might be the sleeper hit of the year.  The first movie made $543 million worldwide, which is nothing to scoff at, but Despicable Me 2 has far out-grossed it with $840 million worldwide, and it's the second-highest grossing movie of 2013 thus far.  Man of Steel is a distant third with $662 million worldwide.  And as to why Despicable Me 2 is such a success, I would throw a lot of credit to the minions.  They are by far the most memorable part of that movie, and their spin-off Minions could be huge.  In fact, Universal has discovered they could have a heavy hitter in summer 2015, and that summer is already packed.

Minions will now move back from its December 19, 2014 release to July 10, 2015.  It's surrounded by the Terminator reboot (July 1st), Independence Day 2 (July 3rd), Superman vs. Batman (July 17th), The Smurfs 3 (July 25th), and Ant-Man and Peregrine's Home for Peculiars on July 31st.  If Minions out-grosses all of these movies, I wouldn't be surprised.  Considering that The Smurfs 2 grossed less than half of the first film's domestic take, Minions is poised to be the biggest kid-friendly franchise of that month.  Don't underestimate the power of adorable gibberish.