Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch and Paramount/Skydance’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning kicked off summer blockbuster season with a record-breaking four-day Memorial Day weekend, securing the top two slots on an estimated $183m and $77.5m, respectively.
Over three days, the dynamic duo earned $145m and $64m. Comscore said the three-day Friday-through-Sunday weekend generated $262m in total, pushing North American box office for the year to date to just over $3bn.
All releases combined for $322m, ahead of the previous $314m benchmark set in 2013, when Fast & Furious 6, The Hangover Part III, and Star Trek: Into Darkness fuelled film-going.
Through Sunday, sales were tracking 21% ahead of 2024 by the same stage, when Warner Bros’ Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga delivered a muted start to a summer season that only really took off in June. Reports said the summer season is on course to bring in $4.2bn, an improvement on 2024’s $3.7bn that would become only the second time post-pandemic that the season’s box office would cross $4bn.
Disney’s Lilo & Stitch remake of the 2002 animation played in 4,410 locations and exceeded $120m opening weekend projections, overtaking the $160.5m four-day Memorial Day haul of Top Gun: Maverick to rank as the all-time biggest single film debut over the holiday weekend. Maverick, like the Mission: Impossible films, also hails from the Paramount-Skydance-Tom Cruise entertainment-industrial complex and had held the record since 2022.
Lilo & Stitch was originally earmarked to go straight to Disney+ and according to reports the budget is a relatively trim $100m. Already on a global box office of $341.7m, the film is racing into profit. Disney CEO Bob Iger has ordered his executives to focus on fewer, better theatrical releases, and the fact that the original animation is a mere 23 years old will have helped lure nostalgic Millennials and the older Gen Z contingent back to the cinema with their children.
Dean Fleischer Camp directed and Maia Kealoha stars in the tale of a lonely Hawaiian girl whose life changes when she befriends a chaotic alien, voiced by Chris Sanders, who co-helmed the original animation and counts The Wild Robot and How To Train Your Dragon among his directing credits.
In other box office milestones, Lilo & Stitch has achieved the second biggest North American debut of the year-to-date behind A Minecraft Movie on $162.8m; the second biggest four-day holiday weekend debut ever behind Black Panther’s $242m from President’s Day Weekend in 2018; the third biggest debut by a Disney live-action release behind $192m from The Lion King in 2019 and $175m from Beauty And The Beast in 2017; and has already surpassed the $145.8m lifetime gross of the animated Lilo & Stitch.
Disney has become the first studio in 2025 to cross $2bn at the worldwide box office. The current $2.1bn haul is comprised of $909m from North America and $1.2bn from the international arena.
Cruise’s action vehicle Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning just premiered out of competition in Cannes and set a new opening weekend record for the 29-year, $3.9bn franchise that we are told will end with the eighth instalment. Nobody really knows if this will be the true finale. Global box office determines these things and Paramount’s top executives will bend the storylines that frame Ethan Hunt’s world to their will. Another factor: Cruise has said he wants to keep making films for the rest of his life.
Early indicators are promising. An A- CinemaScore grade and projected global tickets sales of more than $204.5m through Tuesday suggest the eighth instalment could overtake the $571.1m worldwide gross achieved by Dead Reckoning in 2023. However the reported $400m price tag means The Final Reckoning will need to go a lot higher than its predecessor to break even. The latest instalment sees Hunt and his team go all out to thwart an AI nemesis. The cast includes Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Pom Klementieff, Esai Morales, and Ving Rhames, and Christopher McQuarrie co-wrote and directed.
Males comprised 62% of the audience, with 54% of all ticket buyers aged 35 and above. The Final Reckoning played in 3,857 sites overall and 425 Imax locations. It over-indexed in Canada with 12.3% market share.
New Line/Warner Bros’ Final Destination: Bloodlines in third place slipped 62% in its second weekend and has earned a promising $94.1m. Disney/Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* and Warner Bros’ Sinners round out the top five and have grossed $174m after four sessions and $258.8m after six, respectively. Warner Bros’ A Minecraft Movie ranks eighth and has amassed $421.4m after eight weekends.
Angel Studios’ latest release, the drama The Last Rodeo starring Neal McDonough, arrived at number six on $5.3m in 2,205 sites. Sony Pictures Classics opened Laura Piani’s French romantic comedy drama Jane Austen Wrecked My Life on $290,970 in 61 sites.
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