‘Jurassic World Dominion’ Passes $600 Million

In holdover news that isn’t Top Gun: Maverick ($472 million domestic and around $900 million worldwide), Universal and Amblin’s Jurassic World Dominion earned another $58.6 million in weekend two along with a projected $68 million over the Juneteenth holiday. That three-day drop is “just” 60%, which isn’t spectacular but is close enough to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s 58% drop ($60 million from a $148 million debut in 2018) to presume similar legs over the next several weeks. Besides, as noted many times, there aren’t many big tentpoles between now and, I dunno, Avatar’s reissue on September 23 or Black Adam on October 21. Colin Trevorrow’s $185 million dino epic has earned $259 million as of Monday night, and if it legs out like Fallen Kingdom it’ll still end with $391 million domestic.

Yes, Top Gun: Maverick is the movie of the moment, but Jurassic World 3 is still kicking relative box office butt right alongside it. Critics may not like it any more than most of the previous Jurassic sequels, but audiences don’t seem to mind its locusts > dinosaurs plotting or its lack of scenes where dinosaurs eat people (again, I blame the outcry over Katie McGrath’s cool Jurassic World death). The film is still the only game in town for dino peril and tentpoles centered on non-super heroic, non-superpowered and not-so-special regular people (yes, I’m counting the one-man armies like James Bond, Ethan Hunt, John Wick and Dominic Toretto as metaphorical superheroes). With almost no big tentpoles for the next several months, Jurassic World Dominion will have little real competition.

It will place third or fourth (depending on Thor: Love and Thunder earning noticeably more than Thor: Ragnarök) domestically for the year by summer’s end. It’s still a three-way global slugfest between Top Gun: Maverick (just over $900 million), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (around $940 million) and Jurassic World Dominion ($622 million and counting). Thor 4 (whose predecessor earned $315 million domestic and $854 million global) and Minions: The Rise of Gru (Despicable Me 3 earned $272 million domestic but was the only $1 billion grosser in the summer of 2017) are still waiting in the wings to offer their best shot at taking the championship. Among what’s left for 2022, only Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in November and Avatar: The Way of Water in December provide comparable competition.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness earned $4.5 million (-14%) in its seventh weekend and $5.1 million over the holiday. That brings its domestic cume up to $405.9 million, meaning it’ll pass Captain America: Civil War ($408 million) and Iron Man 3 ($409 million). With around $950 million worldwide thus far, a pre-Covid business-as-usual performance in China, Russia and Ukraine likely would have resulted in a global total in line with those films ($1.155 billion in 2016 and $1.215 billion in 2013), so any talk of underperformance is nonsense and should be ridiculed. I still think it’s a mistake to send the film to Disney+ so early (on Wednesday, the same day as the third episode of Ms. Marvel and the first season finale of Obi-Wan Kenobi), but I digress.

20th Century Studios and Disney’s Bob’s Burgers: The Movie earned $1.1 million (-55%) in weekend four along with a $1.3 million holiday haul. That gives it a $29.97 million 25-day cume. DreamWorks and Universal’s The Bad Guys earned $950,000 (-63%) over the Fri-Sun weekend for a $1.2 million holiday gross. It, like Bob’s Burgers, took a hit from Lightyear, but it’ll still end Monday with $94.4 million domestic and $235 million worldwide. It won’t reach Encanto’s $256 million cume, but that it’s close implies that the latter film’s performance is more of a Disney problem than a Covid problem. Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has $191 million domestic and $397 million global as it crawls to $400 million worldwide, while A24’s Everything, Everywhere All at Once has earned a stunning $65 million domestic.