Heavy TV advertising and strong franchise brand awareness rocketed Universal Pictures’ “Despicable Me 4” to a $122.6 million box office over the five-day July 4th holiday period, according to Comscore.

The movie earned $75 million for its more traditional three-day weekend results, and box-office results for the U.S. and Canada were in line with expectations. 

The best five-day result for the popular movie franchise -- which started in 2010 -- was in for ”Despicable Me 2," which scored $143 million, in 2013.

During the last seven days, “Despicable Me 4” owned the holiday TV airwaves with $5.4 million in TV ad spending from 2,190 airings, according to estimates from EDO Ad EnGage.

Overall, the studio spent an estimated $26.7 million for 6,150 airings.

The next-highest TV ad spending for a theatrical movie was for Searchlight Picture’s “Kinds of Kindness,” which came in at $1.2 million (575 airings), and three weeks after its debut has totaled $3.8 million in box office receipts.

Two other holiday-focused movies also pulled in decent results. The fourth week of “Inside Out 2” reached $30 million for the three-day period (now totaling $533.8 million), while the second week of Paramount Pictures’ “A Quiet Place: Day One” came in at $21 million ($94.4 million).

The five wide-release movies in 2024 with the highest TV ad spend so far are Walt Disney’s “Inside Out 2” ($35.5 million), Paramount’s “IF” ($27.8 million), Universal’s “Kung Fu Panda 4” ($27.8 million), Universal’s “Despicable Me 4” ($26.7 million) and 20th Century Studios’ “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” ($23.8 million).