American 3D film 'The Minions' has set a new record for animated film at the Chinese box office.
By pulling in roughly 123 million yuan, or some 20 million US dollars over the weekend, 'The Minions 'surpassed Kung Fu Panda 2, as the all-time top-grossing animated film for its opening day in China.
Director of the film, Kyle Balda, elaborates on the difficulties in making this spin-off to 'Despicable Me' franchise.
"I think the main challenge was trying to tell a story with minions, pull out these three minions, and give them differentiated personalities, and trying to follow them to the entire story I think that was the principle challenges."
The film portrays three minions venturing a thrilling journey into the world, aiming to find a new evil boss to follow.
Famous actress Sandra Bullock, who starred as Scarlet Overkill, an ambitious supervillain, gives her take on the film.
The beautiful thing of the Minions is it works in any language, and because of the physical comedy in the sweetness and their motion behind what they are saying,even you can't understand it, you know exactly what happening. You just love them, even when they're trying to be, you know, mischievous, somewhat evil. They can't, because they are the little yellow pills that are just sweet."
The China debut for "Minions" was 48 percent higher than that of "Despicable Me 2."
Combined with the U.S. total of 332 million US dollars, the worldwide haul for "Minions" is now just over 1 billion US dollars.