Despite Jurassic World Rebirth’s theme of dinosaur exhaustion, moviegoers don’t appear to share that sentiment.
With a global, five-day premiere of $318.3 million, the latest Jurassic World movie dominated the Fourth of July holiday box office, according to studio projections on Sunday.
The Gareth Edwards-directed Universal Pictures film debuted in 4,308 theaters throughout North America on Wednesday and made $147.3 million in its first five days of play. The typical three-day weekend, which includes the Friday holiday, Saturday, and anticipated Sunday ticket sales, accounts for an estimated $91.5 million of that total.
It added $171 million to the initial total by opening in 82 international countries, including China. The studio claims that $41.5 million of the revenue came from China alone, where it was shown on 65,000 screens, including 760 IMAX screens. It’s the largest Motion Picture Association (MPA) opening of the year in the nation.
Jim Orr, who is in charge of Universal’s domestic distribution, described the outcome as simply amazing. Jurassic World Rebirth is a huge, entertaining, and incredibly well-executed adventure—exactly what summertime fans want.
Jurassic World flourished on the upscale large format screens where it was shown, but it was absent from domestic IMAX theaters (because of a commitment to keep screening Formula One). Dolby Cinema was one of those choices; in only five days, it generated about $8 million from just 167 screens.
The fourth film in the Jurassic World series and the seventh since Steven Spielberg’s original Michael Crichton adaptation swept the box office in the summer of 1993 is Rebirth, which stars Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey. Critics gave the new movie mixed reviews; it has a 51% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a B CinemaScore from first-week viewers.
The large number of viewers, ranging in age from eight to eighty, and the fact that the movie went above and beyond expectations at every stage in spite of the critiques impressed the company.
According to Orr, the word-of-mouth about it is fantastic. It should also indicate a lengthy run over the course of the summer.
It is challenging to objectively compare the release of Rebirth to the other Jurassic World movies, the first of which debuted to $208 million domestically in 2015, due to factors like inflation, the holiday weekend, and the realities of post-COVID moviegoing. Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, the other two, opened with $148 million and $145 million, respectively.
Screenwriter David Koepp, who previously wrote Jurassic Park, returned to direct the story of a perilous search for dinosaur DNA (this time not for the creation of dinosaurs, but for the treatment of heart disease) in Jurassic World Rebirth, which also included a new principal cast. The production cost, excluding marketing and promotion expenses, was estimated to be $180 million net.
The dinosaurs defeated last week’s winner, Brad Pitt’s racing flick F1, and no big new movies dared challenge them. With $26.1 million, Formula One had a slight 54% decline in its second weekend, bringing its domestic total down to $109.5 million. It is still showing on IMAX screens, which sold $7.6 million worth of tickets over the weekend in North America. With a running total of $293.6 million, it is getting close to $300 million globally.
The live-action Universal film How to Train Your Dragon came in third place with $11 million from its fourth weekend, totaling $224 million domestically. With $5.7 million, Disney and Pixar’s Elio came in fourth. Elio has just surpassed $96 million worldwide in just three weekends. With $4.6 million, 28 Years Later completed the top five.
