‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ Nabs $30.5 Million at Wednesday Box Office for a Likely $125-$135 Million Wed-Sun Debut
Universal’s seventh 'Jurassic' pic looks to open almost identically to the last few ‘Despicable Me’ and ‘Minions’ films over their respective long Independence Day holiday debuts.
Universal and Amblin’s Jurassic World Rebirth, starring Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey and Mahershala Ali, earned $30.5 million in its first day at the domestic box office. That includes $0 in Tuesday showings, as the film received old-school “starts at 12:01 a.m.” showings instead of the now-standard advance-day previews. Universal doesn’t do Tuesday previews for Wednesday releases due to the “Cheap Ticket Tuesday” issue. We’ll see if any future Thursday openings (however rare they may be) are impacted by AMC’s upcoming “50% off on Wednesday” promotion. So, no, the lack of conventional day-before showings wasn’t about the studio trying to hide something related to the movie’s quality or what-have-you.
As you presumably know, midnight previews (along with less regular advance-night showings) were par for the course for much of my lifetime up through the in-theater massacre that took place in Aurora, Colorado during a midnight showing of Warner Bros.’ The Dark Knight Rises on July 20, 2012. Contrary to the still-persistent popular belief, the assailant wasn’t explicitly dressed as the Joker, and he didn’t slaughter twelve people due to any circumstance related to the movie or even *the movies.* Hey, at least we responded to the tragedy by getting serious about gun control and/or increasing affordable access to those suffering from mental illness, right? Oh… right.
The Gareth Edwards-directed and David Koepp-penned Jurassic sequel earned mixed-negative reviews (53% and 5.8/10 on Rotten Tomatoes) while earning a lower-than-the-norm B from CinemaScore. For reference, Jurassic Park and Jurassic World are the only installments to receive majority-positive reviews (91% and 8.5/10 in 1993 and 72% and 6.7/10 in 2015), as well as an A rating from CinemaScore. The Lost World (56% and 6.1/10 in 1997) nabbed a B+, Jurassic World III (49% and 5.4/10 in 2001) earned a B- and both Fallen Kingdom (47% and 5.4/10 in 2018) Dominion (29% and 4.8/10 in 2022) earned an A- from opening night audiences.
Does this mean anything beyond the now semi-regular circumstance (see also - Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes) of opening night audiences being somewhat pickier due to fandom-specific standards or nitpicks? I’d argue probably not, but we’ll see. The opening day gross is right between (sans inflation) Despicable Me 4’s $27 million July 3 Wednesday opening last year (toward a $123 million holiday debut) and Despicable Me 2’s $35 million July 3 Wednesday opening in 2013 (toward a $143 million long-weekend launch). A big Universal franchise title is opening over the July 4 weekend on par with the other big Universal franchise title.
If the $180 million Jurassic World Rebirth legs out accordingly (Jurassic Park III earned $19 million on Wednesday in late July 2001, toward an $81 million five-day debut), we can expect a Wednesday-to-Sunday opening weekend of around $125-$135 million. Jurassic has long been a massive franchise with casual moviegoers and/or their kids who don’t A) buy tickets weeks in advance or B) make their fandom a definitive part of their personality. Since anyone who showed up on Wednesday likely would have shown up on Friday if that were opening day, a five-day total anywhere near the $148 million and $145 million Fri-Sun debuts of Fallen Kingdom and Dominion is “fine, actually.”