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Movie fans flocked to see Disney’s Lilo and Stitch and the eighth instalment of Paramount’s Mission: Impossible franchise, giving Hollywood hope for a return to box office growth after years of disappointment.
Cinemas in North America raked in more than $260mn through Sunday, setting a record for Memorial Day bank holiday, considered the start of the US summer movie season. The performance marked a 20 per cent improvement from last year’s dismal showing, one of the worst Memorial Day weekends ever.
The strong weekend results come ahead of what many expect will be a strong slate for the summer and the rest of the year. This summer has a number of anticipated films, including F1, starring Brad Pitt and produced by Apple, in June, followed by Warner Bros’ Superman and Disney’s Fantastic Four in July.
“This isn’t a one-hit wonder of summer movie seasons,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior analyst at Comscore. “The slate is there this year.”
Already, the North American box office is up 21 per cent from a year ago, thanks to A Minecraft Movie, Captain America: Brave New World and the breakout hit Sinners, directed by Ryan Coogler.
This is a significant shift from the trend in recent years, when a patchy release schedule owing to Covid-19 disruptions and the 2023 Hollywood strikes left cinemas with a dearth of new films for weeks at a time.
There is a healthy supply of non-franchise films scheduled for the summer season, including Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme, released on Friday and Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing in August.
Two other sequels, Wicked Two and the third instalment of James Cameron’s Avatar, will be released at the end of the year.
Lilo & Stitch took in $145.5mn over three days and is expected to hit $183mn for the holiday weekend, making it the best performing movie of the weekend. The movie, about a lonely Hawaiian girl and an alien, also opened in first place worldwide, taking in $341mn, Comscore estimates.
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, starring Tom Cruise, broke a record for the nearly 30-year-old franchise, earning $63mn through Sunday and an estimated $77mn for the holiday weekend.
The US box office is likely to return to growth this year after shrinking in 2024, analysts at Bank of America said in a recent research report. Studios are becoming more cost-conscious, with marketing campaigns shrinking from six to nine months to three months, while poorly performing films are being moved to streaming services more quickly.
“This is a dream scenario after a tumultuous few years” for cinemas, Dergarabedian said.
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