WillJurassic Worldbe the biggest movie of the summer? Maybe! But it will have to beatAvengers: Age of Ultronand that won’t be an easy task. The Marvel sequel earned an impressive $191.2 million during it’s first weekend, making it the second biggest opening in history just behindMarvel’s The Avengers. And it has gone onto make $388.5 million and counting in the states with a global tally that exceeded $1 billion. Right now,Jurassic Worldis tracking inline with 2013’sMan of Steel. This means it’s going to have a pretty good opening weekend. But it won’t be enough to stop the mighty Marvel train from steamrolling everything else these next four months.
Dinosaurs are still extremely popular, and it’s been over 14 years sinceJurassic Park IIImade its debut. So people are anxious to revisit this franchise. Right now, theColin Trevorrowdirected thriller is tracking to open somewhere between $100 million and $130 million. This would demolish the Jurassic Park record held byThe Lost World: Jurassic Park, which made $72.1 million in 1997. At the time, that was the highest grossing opening weekend in history.
Jurassic Worldis the first in the franchise not to include one of the three main leads from the first film. Though,B.D. Wongis returning as Dr. Wu. Right now, the long-awaited sequel falls into the 90% awareness range amongst potential audience members, which is pretty high, especially since the movie doesn’t open for another couple of weeks. It is sure to be a big hit. But it isn’t known yet how good the movie is, since it hasn’t screened for any critics. Even with a big opening weekend, a movie can live or die by word of mouth. Will Jurassic World have staying power at the box office and go toe-to-toe withAvengers: Age of Ultron? Or will it not resonate with longtime fans in the way it’s intended? We’ll have to wait until June 12 to find out!
