After launching around the world several weeks ago, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom finally opened in the largest movie market, the US. This really was the litmus paper for the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom box office, and will decide whether or not the film can achieve the same success as its predecessor.
In the US this weekend, the Fallen Kingdom box office had a strong opening. The film grossed $150m in the country. That’s on top of the $561.5m it has already garnered at the international box office.
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In isolation, that figure is pretty solid. At the very least, it ensures that Fallen Kingdom will recoup its $170m production budget.
The drop-off rate at the Fallen Kingdom box office
Still, it isn’t all good news. The film’s opening was down by around 28% on Jurassic World‘s 2015 initial weekend. The first film in the reboot trilogy of the iconic dinosaur action series made $208.8m in its first three days.
Compared to other major franchises that’s quite a sizeable drop-off.
On its opening weekend, Star Wars: The Last Jedi only made about 11% less than The Force Awakens. Other recent releases have done even better at eliminating drop-off. Deadpool 2 made just 5% less than its predecessor on opening weekend. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers: Infinity War made 22% more than predecessor Black Panther in its first weekend.
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By GlobalDataWhile fans were prepared to give Jurassic World a chance in 2015 (probably due to nostalgia for the original trilogy), its polarising reception clearly harmed Fallen Kingdom.
A solid performance
Still, despite not achieving the same heights as its predecessor, a $150m opening is still nothing to sniff at.
It’s the fourth highest grossing opening weekend of 2018, behind Infinity War, Black Panther, and Incredibles 2. Considering that Fallen Kingdom is competing with the latter for a similar family audience, it’s not bad news by any stretch of the imagination.
It will be a little tricky to calculate Fallen Kingdom‘s total box office potential. The staggered global release dates around the world ensure that. However, suffice it to say, the opening weekend is probably a good indication of the Jurassic series powering its way back into the top ten highest grossing franchises of all time list.
Fallen Kingdom needs to generate around another $125m to beat the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise. If it can generate another $450m, it should be able to push the Spider-Man franchise into 11th place and claim its place in the top ten.
That would be a huge coup for Universal which currently has only one franchise (Fast And Furious) in the top ten. In comparison Disney has four and Warner Bros’ has three. That would be cause for celebration at Universal after its attempt to create its own cinematic universe based on the Universal Monsters series fell apart.
Competition
Fallen Kingdom looks like it’ll continue to be the biggest thing at the box office next week. However, it’s run won’t be totally free of competition.
Marvel’s Ant-Man And The Wasp will be the first major challenge in two weeks. The week after that Hotel Transylvania 3 will attempt to win over the family audience. One week later, another action film, Dwayne Johnson’s Skyscraper will also undermine Fallen Kingdom.
The first Jurassic World film grossed over $1.67bn and a part of that success was its unchallenged box office run. The film didn’t drop more than 50% for its first nine weeks. While Fallen Kingdom had a strong opening, it almost certainly can’t maintain that kind of momentum.
Chances are that Fallen Kingdom is looking at a US gross of about $400m. That’d definitely put it on track to make over a billion dollars worldwide. If it achieves that it will become the second highest grossing film in the franchise after Jurassic World, but just above the original Jurassic Park.
