Universal's $5.4B Franchise Tests The Rating Limits With Minions & Monsters

2 hours ago 9

Published Jun 4, 2026, 5:36 PM EDT

Nick Bythrow is a Lead Writer for ScreenRant. He has been writing for the site since September 2022. He graduated from Hampshire College in 2022, where he triple majored in Journalism, Communications, and Media Studies. When he's not writing about TV and movies for ScreenRant and his blog, Frayed Branches, Nick is penning speculative fiction and poetry on Amazon. He lives outside Boston, Massachusetts.

Universal's $5.4 billion animated franchise is testing the limits of a PG rating, just one month ahead of its wide theatrical release.

Now, Film Ratings has confirmed the MPA has officially rated Minions & Monsters PG, but with some caveats that push the boundaries of what a PG movie can get away with. According to the rating, the movie is PG "for violence/action, language and rude/macabre humor." This makes it the first movie under the Minions umbrella to be rated PG for language, a rather uncommon occurrence in movies aimed at children. It's also the first to include "macabre humor" as part of its rating, indicating some more grim jokes in contrast to other installments.

This makes Minions & Monsters the first entry out of every Despicable Me movie to feature any form of language rating from the MPA. It appears that, despite the goofy nature of the film and its continued appeal to a younger demographic, the movie is going to include a few darker elements than the franchise is known for. The trailers for the movie don't seem to give this away, as the Minions are up to their usual comedic shenanigans without many dark elements directly in the promotional material.

Minions & Monsters will be Illumination's second major release of 2026. The first was the financially successful but critically panned Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which has made $994.7 million at the worldwide box office as of writing. Each Minions movie has been a smash hit, too: 2015's Minions earned $1.159 billion, while Minions: The Rise of Gru saw a $940.2 million box office haul. The third movie seems poised to perform similarly, even with the PG rating confirming some darker elements in the film.

So far, this is the last movie in the Despicable Me franchise to have been announced. However, given how much of a box office juggernaut the films still are, it seems inevitable that Illumination will produce more. For now, though, the only other movies on its slate include The Secret Life of Pets 3, Sing 3, and potentially two other movies set in the Super Mario universe. The animation studio appears to be on a roll with its sequels, having crafted a number of profitable franchises in the process.

As for Minions & Monsters, the movie appears poised to succeed despite its very different type of PG rating in contrast to the other movies in the series. Even with cruder language and darker humor in store, the movie is going to maintain expectations that will ensure parents know this installment will be slightly darker in its use of humor than the entries that have come before it.