After two weeks of Tom Cruise and his action sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick,” topping the box office, Universal released “Jurassic World: Dominion” into 4,676 theaters, effectively concluding director Colin Trevorrow‘s trilogy he began with the 2015 reboot/sequel “Jurassic World.”
Things didn’t go so swimmingly for the finale, as when the American reviews came in on Wednesday, they were mixed. To say that American critics weren’t kind to “Dominion” would be an understatement. The pans came fast and hard on Wednesday, leaving Trevorrow’s film with a 31% Rotten on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest showing for the entire franchise. Looking at the Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes tells a different story as 79% of non-critics gave the movie a thumbs up, as well as the movie receiving an “A-” CinemaScore, exactly the same as what “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” received four years ago.
“Dominion” made $18 million in Thursday previews, which is just half a million less than “Jurassic World” made in Thursday previews seven years earlier, although “Dominion” previews started three hours earlier at 4pm. The adventure sequel would end up with just under $60 million on Friday (including that $18 million), which led to an opening weekend of roughly $143.4 million, which is slightly lower than the $148 million opening for “Fallen Kingdom.” (6/13 Update: When actual box office came in on Monday, “Dominion” had grossed $145.1 million for the weekend.)
The previous installment of the franchise ended up making $417 million domestically, but “Dominion” has far stronger releases on its own tail. Overseas, “Dominion” grossed $177 million, including $52.5 million in China, which brings the movie’s global take to $389.2 million in two weeks. (“Dominion” made $25 million in IMAX theaters, split between domestic and international.)
SEE Grab the popcorn and sound off in our movie forums
“Maverick” continued to hold up astonishingly well in its third weekend, dropping just 44% to second place with $50 million. (Update: The actual weekend box office for it ended up being $51.9 million.) It has grossed $393.3 million domestically so far, which puts it less than $5 million away from Marvel’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” despite that sequel opening three weeks earlier. There’s a good chance “Maverick” will cross the $400 million mark this coming week, neck and neck with “Doctor Strange.” Some might feel (correctly) that the continued success of “Maverick” may have hurt “Dominion’s” opening, but those reviews certainly didn’t help either.
“Multiverse of Madness” dropped to third place with $4.9 million with a six-week domestic take of $397.8 million. The race is on with “Maverick” to $400 million, but it’s possible that by Tuesday, we’ll have our first two movies to hit that milestone this year.
“The Bob’s Burgers Movie” dropped to fourth place with $2.3 million (down 50%) with $27 million grossed so far. “The Bad Guys” took fifth place, a pretty amazing achievement considering that it’s in its eighth week of release in theaters. It made another $2.2 million this weekend (down 33%), which brings its domestic total to $91.5 million. (Update: With actual box office reported on Monday, “The Bad Guys” ended up besting “Bob’s Burgers,” taking fourth place with $2.53 million to the latter’s $2.46 million.)
SEE Box office: All time domestic top-grossing movies
“Downton Abbey: A New Era” lost over 1,400 theaters on Friday, which led to it also having a 48% drop in its fourth weekend. It has grossed roughly $40 million in North America.
A24’s hit action-comedy “Everything Everywhere All at Once” took seventh place with $1.3 million in its 12th week in theaters. It has grossed $63 million and may still have at least one or more weeks in the top 10 to go.
Most players in Gold Derby’s box office prediction game had “Dominion” winning the weekend, but less than half had it opening with less than $150 million. This week’s big “gamebuster” might be the 92 players who picked “Downton Abbey” taking fifth place over “The Bad Guys,” since the 44 players who picked the latter to take fifth place have a better chance of going 6 for 6. (Update: The actual box office for “The Bad Guys” put it ahead of “Bob’s Burgers” for fourth place, which only 15 players had in their predictions with only 17 players having “Bob’s Burgers” to take fourth place. That greatly lessens the number of possible players with a perfect 6 out of 6 for the weekend.)
Exactly four players went 6/6 for the weekend of June 3 with “tonyrandall” and “paulhardister” earning the most points among those four. See the leaderboard.
On Friday, Disney will open the latest Pixar movie, “Lightyear,” and on Wednesday, you can read Gold Derby’s weekend preview about how it might fare.
