Box Office: ‘Jurassic World Dominion’ Nabs Dino-Mite $143 Million Weekend

The film opened in North America with a total of 143.37 million dollars, including $12.3 million in IMAX. The $134 million launch of The Batman is just below Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which opened to $187 million. Despite a Covid curve and understandable "folks are less curious than they were four years ago" variables, it opened almost on par with the blockbuster movie. It is Universal's fourth-largest debut weekend of all time and their biggest opening sinceJurassic World 2, which opened in 2015.

The new cast and the original trio were brought together in the sequel, which was also a trilogy capper. The 90's nostalgia may have canceled out some potential franchise interest and made audiences too old to be excited about dinosaurs. The reviews were bad, but the audiences have always shown up. If the bad reviews assure the audience that they will get the franchise-specific elements, they will show up. It's called the "spectre test." Even though it is one of the worst Bond movies, it still has everything.

Cinemascore gave an A- for the movie, the same as for Fallen Kingdom and just below the A grades for the movies. Audiences tend to show up in large numbers and enjoy themselves enough to let their friends know about it. There is a clear difference betweenJurassic World and Fantastic Four, even though the Internet pretends that it is one of the worst mega-blockbusters of all time. We didn't expect big-budget monster movies to get good reviews and we didn't think it was evidence of a culture war when audiences liked "Dinosaur Park 6" more than the critics.

Audiences can't get anything else in other mega-bucks franchise, like Michael Bay's Transformers films. The Jurassic franchise is now even more of a unique-unto-itself cinematic franchise because of Hollywood spending a decade chasing commercial and critical glories. It isn't about superheros or one-man-armies, but about regular people in extraordinary circumstances. You get to see dinosaurs fight each other and eat people, which you can't see in The Batman or Top Gun: Maverick. There is a lot of franchise history and our heroes need to save the world, but it is not a dealbreaker.

The film was directed by Colin Trevorrow, who was supposed to direct Star Wars: Episode IX before everyone overreacted to his "one for me" original The Book of Henry. It opened in China with just over 50 million dollars, less than the $11 million and $9 million it earned in the US and UK. China is less able to deliver blockbuster grosses for most Hollywood tentpoles. An over/under finish in China still qualifies as an advantage. It is likely to be the summer's biggest global grosser. If the audience scores are strong and there is no tentpoles, the legs of Jurassic World 2 may be close to Venom 2.

For a movie that made $170 million, everyone hated it, and Wonder Woman made $38 million less worldwide than Black Panther. J.A. Bayona's sequel opened slowly around the world. The film earned $652 million domestic and $1.67 billion worldwide. If apples and oranges were added to the domestic and global totals, it would add up to more than a half a billion dollars. In North America, the legs of F9 are worth $170 million. With no consensus pick/second choice live-action tentpoles left this season, Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World: Dominion may be the ones to watch.