Jurassic World Dominion ends Top Gun: Maverick's box-office winning streak
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
LOS ANGELES • Jurassic World Dominion, the sixth film in the franchise about dinosaurs that escape from an amusement park, fought off weak reviews to lead the North American box office, snatching the crown from Top Gun: Maverick.
The film from Universal Pictures made US$143 million (S$199 million) in its domestic weekend opening, across 4,676 theatres, according to an estimate on Sunday from Comscore Inc. That makes it the second-largest opening of this year, after Walt Disney's Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness.
Boxoffice Pro was forecasting US$137 million to US$167 million.
Jurassic World Dominion picks up a storyline first created in the classic 1993 Steven Spielberg movie Jurassic Park. It is the third movie in the franchise to star Chris Pratt, a scientist who is navigating the challenges of a world in which dinosaurs live among humans. Some of the actors from the original film, including Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, reprise their roles.
The film had a poor critical reception, scoring recommendations from only 33 per cent of critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Still, movies with familiar stories and spectacular visuals consistently overcome bad reviews to generate strong ticket sales.
The film's 2018 predecessor, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, had a 47 per cent Rotten Tomatoes rating and made US$148 million in its domestic debut.
Top Gun: Maverick, from Paramount Global and Skydance Media, continued to generate strong ticket sales, taking home US$50 million in its third weekend, Comscore estimated. The week-to-week drop in sales has been smaller than usual, with some older fans who had not yet returned to cinemas since the start of the pandemic motivated to see actor Tom Cruise fly fighter jets.
Jurassic World Dominion is the latest in a series of regularly scheduled big-budget releases on tap as more fans show they are willing to return to cinemas.
It will be up against the family-friendly Toy Story spin-off Lightyear, which opens later this week. The film from Walt Disney's Pixar division is based on the character Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story franchise (1995 to 2019).
BLOOMBERG
