The Weekend Report

A trip to the past was well worth it as Jurassic World blew away the competition with an estimated $204.3 million debut. Roughly three of every four moviegoers that bought a ticket this weekend were watching familiar Raptors and the new monster on the block, Dominus Rex. There was no counterprogramming on the horizon.

In the niches, new Indian imports included Hindi Hamari Adhuri Kahaani with a disappointing $129,000, an okay start for Malayam Premam, with $91,600, and dismal results for Telugu Kerintha with $12,300. Exclusive bows saw SNL doc Live from New York! Fail to generate laughs or business. The Wolfpack observed buoyant results of $42,700 at two sites for the perils of feral brothers home-schooled on movies. Also strong was Sundance winner Me and Earl and the Dying Girl that grossed $208,000 from 15 initial playdates.

Following a month of box office downturns, weekend revenues of $270 million saw the movie experience expand by a whopping 107% from the prior weekend, and a 46% improvement from 2014, when the launch of 22 Jump Street and How to Train Your Dragon 2 led the field with respective openings of $57.1 million and $49.5 million.

It’s been 22 years since Spielberg brought Michael Crichton’s bestseller to the screen and we were awed. And, of greater relevance, there’s been a 13 years lapse since a Jurassic sequel. Rebooting the franchise was no slamdunk and it was met with further skepticism with the announcement that the new helmer would come from the American indie scene.

Still, tracking in the past month indicated an audience rapt with anticipation. A week ago there was confidence the film would open to about $125 million to $130 million. That figure bumped up slightly as opening day approached and staggering numbers were posted in international outposts; especially China. Thursday previews and Friday matinees demonstrated a further bump that set the level up to $180 million and that escalated further with Saturday’s reports. If it continues to inflated present estimates could be smashed further with the potential of setting a new all-time opening record weekend presently held by The Avengers back in 2012 with $207 million.

With so few films ever attaining this level of opening box office potency it shouldn’t be a surprise how cautious revenue estimates were initially. Still, methodology has to take some blame for the low-balling.

The studio has an additional bit of bragging to relish by becoming the first to exceed $1 billion in box office revenues this year on Saturday. That is record speed, bettering Paramount’s former benchmark back in 2008 by nine days.

Internationally,  the picture opened just about everywhere with the exception of Japan that bows in early August. The initial overseas estimate is slightly greater than $300 million with China contributing roughly one-third of that gross. Stereoscopic engagements are at better than 50% of the tally and its 443 foreign Imax screens set a new record of $23.5 million.

It goes without saying that all ages and genders took the Jurassic ride this past weekend. Nonetheless exit demos identified the crowd as 52% male with 61% aged 25-years and older. Roughly 47% of the box office was generated by 3D exhibition.

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