The Rise of Gru available on Netflix? (where to stream)

The minions are back and livelier than ever in the spin-off prequel film Minions: The Rise of Gru, the fifth overall movie in the extremely popular Despicable Me franchise. This movie is directly related to the 2015 movie Minions.

Steve Carrell returns to voice Gru, of course, and he’s joined by an all-star voice cast that includes Taraji P. Henson, Michelle Yeoh, RZA, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Lucy Lawless, Dolph Lundgren, Danny Trejo, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews and Alan Arkin.

Minions: The Rise of Gru is set shortly after the events of the first movie with a 12-year-old Gru growing up in the suburbs. Gru schemes to become part of a team of supervillains known as the Vicious 6.

No, right now, Minions: The Rise of Gru is not on Netflix, although you can watch other Illumination movies on the platform such as Sing 2. Illumination and Netflix have a deal so the company’s movies will go to Netflix in the future. It’s a little complicated.

The deal is that their movies get an exclusive 45-day theatrical window before moving to Peacock for four months. Then Netflix gets the movie for a 10-month window in the middle of the 18-month Pay-1 period. After that, the movie returns to Peacock.

Given what we know about the Illumination/Netflix deal and the film’s July 1 release date, that means we can expect Minions: The Rise of Gru to come to Netflix in late December, most likely.

The math is like this:

Obviously, that math is not exact as there are usually some fluctuations, it’s not a “strict” 45-day window, for example. But a rough estimate means the film should come to Netflix sometime between December 16 and December 31.

Update: Well, we weren’t too far off as Netflix is officially adding the film on Jan. 30!

Then the movie will stay on Netflix through at least September or October 2023.

Right now the only place you can watch the movie is in theaters.