"Despicable Me 2" finally gets a China release and so far it is all good. "Despicable me 2" opened at the top spot in China's box office, earning more than $13 million.

The animated family film by Universal, "Despicable Me 2" opened No. 1 with $4M first day and at $13.8M for the weekend

According to Variety," Despicable Me 2" opened last Friday to $4 million at 3,000 locations, 141 of which were Imax screens. This theatrical release comes seven months after the worldwide release of the film and beats similar 2013 animated flicks such as "Monsters University" with $13.2 million, "The Croods" with $6.4 million and "The Smurfs 2″ with $10.1 million.

The numbers are particularly interesting given the film's predecessor, 2010′s "Despicable Me," never opened in China.

This release comes just one week after China's film bureau announced that 2013 represented a 28% increase in box office gross over 2012, making it the second largest worldwide market after North America with $3.53 billion in annual sales.

According to Variety, The weekend estimate will bring the film's worldwide total to $935 million almost $1 billion, the fourth highest on record for an animated film after "Toy Story 3″ with $1.06 billion, "The Lion King" with $987.5 million and "Finding Nemo" with $936.7 million.

"Despicable Me 2" has received generally positive reviews from critics. The website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 74% approval rating with an average rating of 6.7/10 based on 168 reviews. The website's consensus reads, "Despicable Me 2 offers plenty of eye-popping visual inventiveness and a number of big laughs." Another review website, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 62 based on 39 reviews. The film earned an "A" from audiences polled by CinemaScore. IMDB users gave "Despicable Me 2" a score of 7.6.