As Jurassic World: Dominion is the latest film franchise to return to the big screen for the 2022 summer movie season, it is already breaking records.
Jurassic World Dominion opens in theaters on Friday, June 10, and there are already projections of it making colossal numbers. According to comicbook.com, the first Jurassic World film in 2015 made $1,017,673,342 at the box office, becoming the 9th highest-grossing film worldwide. Its immediate sequel did well, too, with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in 2018, making $1,308,467,944 at the box office, becoming the 16th highest-grossing film of all time. Dominion looks to also be impressive at the box office.
Preview nights are already going strong for the upcoming Jurassic World sequel, which stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard returning as Owen Grady and Claire Dearing, along with alums from the original Jurassic Park films, including Laura Dern’s Ellie Sattler, Sam Neill’s Alan Grant, and Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm. BD Wong, DeWanda Wise, Emily Carmichael, Dichen Lachman, and Mamoudou Athie also join the cast.
When Jurassic World: Dominion opened in theaters in Mexico on Wednesday, June 8, it already made $3 million. This amount is, as comicbook.com says, the best opening preview performance of the rebooted franchise.
With this opening, the numbers beat both of its predecessors, beating Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom by 53% and Jurassic World by 81%. The site says that “current projections for the international box office are at $45 million+, but Deadline says numbers will become clearer once the movie hits Brazil, Hong Kong, and Italy.”
According to Koimoi, as of the article’s June 8 press time, the film had made $55 million through international markets, which is a promising sign that it will bring in big numbers for the weekend box office and its total worldwide gross.
It may be among the top box office earners of the year, competing with Doctor Strange in the Multitude of Madness, which so far is the biggest opener of 2022, and the current film that holds the number one spot at the box office, Top Gun: Maverick.
In a time when there is still a “ripple effect on moviegoers” from the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent successes at the box office show promising films of popular franchises.
Although reviews about Jurassic World: Dominion are mixed, it is ultimately up to the fans on how successful the film will be, as often critics and audiences do not necessarily agree. This, along with the momentum of Top Gun: Maverick’s historic box office run, may pose an extra challenge to the dinosaur action flick.
One thing that looks to entice audience members especially is the fact that the core cast of the Jurassic World films will meet the core cast of the original Jurassic Park franchise. This tactic usually is always popular as fans’ applause crossovers and nostalgia.
There is currently a popular play to nostalgia in films, which benefits both Top Gun: Maverick, a franchise successfully returning to theaters for the first time in 26 years, and Jurassic World: Dominion, which is bringing back old characters from the original Jurassic Park series.
Fans are celebrating nostalgia with Top Gun: Maverick, which was successful in its own right by having a $126 million opening weekend and having the highest second-weekend box office totals of a film that made $100 million its opening weekend with $90 million. This also adds to a reasonable belief that Jurassic World: Dominion will succeed, especially if the excitement is based on nostalgia.
In addition, the under 18 crowd is not usually in the demographic that participates in ticket pre-sales, unlike other successful 2022 films such as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and The Batman. This may lead to higher numbers than projections.
ScreenRant’s predictions for Dominion’s opening weekend are “between $165 million to $205 million.” If it’s on the high end, it will “beat out Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as the biggest opening weekend of 2022,” which opened with $187 million in its first three days.
The Jurassic franchise has shocked before, especially with the 2015 opening of Jurassic World becoming “the biggest opening weekend of all time,” at that point, with $208 million.
If numbers have shown from the success of previous installments, things look to be at mammoth levels for the latest Jurassic feature.
