‘Jurassic World: Rebirth' Box Office: The Ups and Downs of Hollywood’s Most Profitable (Live-Action) Blockbusters
Noting macroeconomic trends in key overseas territories and an understandable dip from "part one" to "part two" in each trilogy, Universal's dino series has held more of its audience than expected.
With a lifetime global total (sans inflation) of $6.026 billion worldwide across six films, on a combined budget of $736 million, the Jurassic franchise has A) averaged $1 billion per film and B) netted an average of 8.19 times its respective production budget on a film-by-film basis. It’s still, in terms of raw budget-versus-gross rate-of-return, Hollywood’s most profitable live-action tentpole series. By “series,” I mean three or more movies, all due respect to Top Gun and (at least until December of this year) Avatar. The next closest such live-action franchise giants are the five-movie Twilight Saga. Summit and Lionsgate’s YA fantasy melodramas earned $3.317 billion globally on a combined budget of $418 million. That’s an average of 7.935 times their per-film budgets. Unless Rebirth tops $1.24 billion, frankly unlikely, it will have to settle for silver. By how much will Rebirth drop from its $1 billion-plus predecessors?
Three weeks before the release of Jurassic World: Rebirth, I wanted to dissect a repeated and generally valid talking point. Namely, that the Jurassic movies, while all massive grossers (give or take Jurassic Park III), have declined with each installment. It may drop again. Talent and track record aside, Scarlett Johansson headlining 15 years after Iron Man 2, in a world where franchises of this scale are even more commonplace, might equal the same butts-in-seats oomph of a kid-friendly Chris Pratt fresh off the LEGO Movie and Guardians of the Galaxy. Regarding the two respective Jurassic trilogies, each sequel has indeed “suffered” a decline in global grosses. This is partly because, like Star Wars, each first installment tends to overperform. However, the movie-to-movie holds, especially with the recent Jurassic World trilogy, align the series more closely with Illumination’s Despicable Me/Minions franchise than (for example) the Fantastic Beasts trilogy.