Another day, another box office record for Jurassic World. The dino sequel demolished nearly every short-term box office record in the book this weekend with a massive $208.8 million domestic debut and a $524m worldwide debut, both the largest ever. The film wasn’t some quick-kill blockbuster either, setting the record for the biggest Saturday ($69.5m) and Sunday ($57.2m) grosses despite “only” snagging the third biggest opening day/Friday on record ($81.9m). Of course, as noted, if you discount the Thursday previews ($18.5m), it gets the record for “pure” Friday ($63.4m) as well, but I digress. And the film followed up with a whopping $25.34m on Monday to snag the third-biggest Monday ever but the biggest non-holiday Monday gross ever as well.
And now it’s done the same for Tuesday, earning another $24.34 million, a drop of just 4% from yesterday. For comparison, Toy Story 3 dropped 51% from Sunday to Monday and 3% from Monday to Tuesday, so we’re dealing with similar legs for nearly double the initial grosses. That’s the third-biggest Tuesday ever and by far the biggest for a film that didn’t open on a Tuesday in advance of the July 4th holiday ($35m for Amazing Spider-Man 2 and $27m for Transformers). That also brings the film’s domestic total to a whopping $258.49m. That means Universal/Comcast Corp.’s Jurassic World has crossed the (arbitrary) $250m domestic milestone in just five days, one day shorter than Walt Disney’s The Avengers and three days ahead of anything else. The Dark Knight, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and Avengers: Age of Ultron needed eight whole shameful days to do it.
Not only is it racking up bigger numbers than its blockbuster predecessors (some of which, of course, didn’t have the 3D advantage) but it is far outpacing even the likes of The Avengers at this early juncture. If this path continues, and I see little reason why it won’t, it will end its first full week in American theaters by sailing past the $300 million domestic mark. Again (notice a pattern here), that’s two days faster than The Avengers and three days faster than The Dark Knight and Avengers 2. Now we get into the guessing game. Can it hold its audience enough to grab the biggest non-opening Friday from Transformers 2 ($36m), or even the biggest “start of second weekend Friday” from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($31m), or heck, even the “second weekend didn’t include a holiday” $29m second Friday of The Avengers?
We can do all of those Friday/Saturday/Sunday comparisons when the time comes, but here’s the real kicker: If Jurassic World ends up above $300m heading into the weekend (and I’m presuming it will, with as much as $310m by Thursday) and it holds up at least well enough to equal or surpass the $103m second weekend of The Avengers (a 51% drop) or make up the difference via stronger weekday grosses, it will end its second weekend over the once fabled $400m domestic milestone. That would be four days faster than The Avengers and eight days faster than the (2D) The Dark Knight, but considering there have only been sixteen films ever to hit that mark in the first release, well, we can discuss the inflation situation when the time comes.
Obviously that’s a lot of speculation based on the next two days and whether or not it drops closer to 50% or 60% in its second weekend, but even the idea that such a thing is possible is a little mind-boggling to consider, and I’m confident enough about the possibility to even suggest as much. I hesitate to wonder if it will hit $1 billion worldwide at the end of the weekend too, but what a headline that will make! Of course, a little less than $400m here and $1b everywhere will be okay too. But how I enjoy doing the math! As always, we’ll see.
