‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ Claws In $150 Million This Weekend

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the fifth entry in the long-running science fiction/action film series, has raked in $150 million on its debut weekend in North America, CNN reports. This brings the overall total to $711.5 million, having released internationally earlier this month, before releasing stateside this past Friday.

In a year that has already seen its fair share of blockbuster releases, this places Fallen Kingdom fourth in terms of the biggest opening weekend, right behind Avengers: Infinity War ($257 million), Black Panther ($202 million), and Incredibles 2 ($182 million).

While its North American debut eclipses the performance of the original Jurassic Park trilogy, Fallen Kingdom falls far short of its predecessor, 2015’s Jurassic World, which revived the Jurassic Park franchise after laying dormant for close to 15 years.

The original three movies brought in $104 million, $143 million, and $80 million respectively (adjusted for inflation), while Jurassic World brought in a staggering $208 million on its debut weekend. Unsurprisingly, the film’s success did not stop there, going on to gross over $1.67 billion worldwide, placing it as the fifth-highest grossing film of all time. As a whole, the franchise has generated over $6 billion in revenue, though this takes into account box office totals, home video sales, and income from video games, toys, and other merchandise.

Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom, follows Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), as they attempt to rescue the remaining dinosaurs on the Central American island of Isla Nubar, before an impending volcanic eruption destroys it. Review wise, Fallen Kingdom falls slightly short of its predecessor. The film currently holds an approval rating of 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a weighted average review score 51 on Metacritic.

Writing for The New York Times, noted film critic A.O. Scott was lukewarm about Fallen Kingdom.

“The reawakening of the slumbering franchise in 2015 gave birth to “Jurassic World,” one of the highest-grossing terrible movies of all time, a lumbering walk in the rebooted park that squandered the charisma of the big lizards and the charm of the human cast in a witless farrago of blockbuster self-importance. ‘Fallen Kingdom,’ directed by J. A. Bayona, is in most respects a dumber, less ambitious movie than its immediate predecessor, and also, for just that reason, a little bit more fun. Some of its high jinks have a hokey, silly, old-fashioned mad-scientist feeling to them, especially when the dinosaurs are chasing people or vice versa. Which is reasonably often.”

On the animated side of things, Disney and Pixar’s Incredibles 2 brought in an estimated $81 million, bringing its worldwide total to $485 million. The follow-up to 2004’s Incredibles has received positive reviews from critics and fans alike, and broke box office records during its opening weekend as the best debut of all time for an animated film.