'Lilo & Stitch' Box Office: Disney's Latest Go Woke Go Broke Disaster Nabs A... Oh Wait... What's This? A $55M Friday?!
Hear me out, but what the commercial fate of Disney's live-action remakes are mostly predicated on whether moviegoers give a damn about the cartoon being remade...?
I guess Disney live-action remakes aren’t dead this week? Months after audiences demonstrated that they didn’t give a damn about Snow White, mainly because they didn’t give a damn about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the live-action Lilo & Stitch just snagged $55 million on its opening day. Akin to last weekend’s initially HBO Max-bound Final Destination: Bloodlines, this mere-$100 million redo of the generationally popular 2002 toon was supposed to go straight to Disney+. But instead, the well-reviewed (69% fresh and 6.1/10 on Rotten Tomatoes) and well-received (a 5 on PostTrak and an A from CinemaScore) live-action remake is on track to set a new Memorial Day weekend record. The sky is the limit between now and Monday, and the only thing preventing me from becoming overly hyperbolic is that the film isn’t going to get the kind of “Holy shit, that was even better than I was expecting!” buzz that helped Aladdin.
Its opening Friday gross (counting Thursday previews) is right between Top Gun: Maverick ($52 million in 2022) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End ($56 million in 2007), and the overall Fri-Mon weekend looks to land above the $162 million Fri-Mon launch of the uber-acclaimed Tom Cruise legacy sequel. If we adjust for inflation, Pirates of the Caribbean 3 ($153 million in 2007) is still tops with around $248 million. I’m sure the studio that released that trilogy-capping epic will be overly concerned about the discrepancy. I’ve got your back, Robert. Friday-to-Monday legs on par with The Little Mermaid ($119 million from a $38 million Friday) and Top Gun 2 ($162 million/$52 million) get it to over/under $175 million. Just for fun, legs on par with Aladdin, which was so much (relatively speaking) better than the lousy previews that I half-wondered if Disney had hustled us, gets Lilo & Stitch past $205 million.