‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ With $150M Reps Uni’s 2nd Highest Opening Ever – Sunday
4TH UPDATE/WRITETHRU, SUNDAY AM: Universal this morning is calling Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom‘s opening weekend at $150M, which reps the studio’s second-best opening ever at the domestic B.O. after Jurassic World‘s gargantuan $208.8M start, and also outranks Furious 7‘s $147.1M bow. Fallen Kingdom‘s Saturday came in at $50M, -15% from its combined previews + Friday of $59M, which is the same Friday-Saturday ease posted by JW three summers ago.
This is a fantastic start for the sequel, well ahead of its $135M lower-end tracking, and only 28% off from JW‘s 3-day, which before Avengers: Infinity War and Star Wars Force Awakens held the title as the highest domestic opening ever for six months in 2015. Note that’s a better hold between JW sequels than Star Wars, which eased 37% in its opening between Force Awakens ($247.9M) and Rogue One ($155M).
Uni is calling the weekend’s demos at 56% under 25. “When you see a Saturday like this easing 15% from that big Friday and preview gross, it means that families are driving business, and that’s why we posted the results that we did,” beamed Universal domestic distribution boss Jim Orr this morning. Fallen Kingdom blasts Uni off for a huge summer, which includes such pivotal pics as The First Purge on July 4, Dwayne Johnson’s Skyscraper, and Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!.
Overall, Imax and premium large format repped 21% of Fallen Kingdom‘s weekend, or $31.5M. Imax alone accounted for nine percent of the seque’s domestic weekend, with $13M at 410 auditoriums. Nine out of the top ten domestic locations featured an Imax screen. RealD has been driving 3D for Fallen Kingdom on a global basis, counting $105M.
Meanwhile, Disney/Pixar’s Incredibles 2 drew $31.7M on Saturday, +32% over Friday, for a second weekend of $80.9M, per the studio, and a running 10-day tally of $350.2M, which would make it the fourth-best Pixar film of all-time, ahead of 2003’s Finding Nemo ($339.7M), and behind Finding Dory ($486.2M), Toy Story 3 ($415M), and Inside Out ($356.4M).
As we mentioned previously, Fallen Kingdom‘s grosses have grown over the weekend, besting the pic’s $135M lower end of tracking. Heading into the weekend, some rivals believed that Incredibles 2 would have a stronger second weekend hold on par with Dory‘s -46%, versus its -56%. That’s arguably because Fallen Kingdom is stealing some of Incredibles 2‘s thunder: PostTrak shows Fallen Kingdom pulling in more of a general audience than Incredibles 2 (69% vs. 56%), and a decent chuck of parents and kids (30% vs. the Pixar pic’s 44%).
As mentioned previously, the Fallen Kingdom marketing partners covered more than double the first film, with an estimated $185M in media. Partners included Doritos, Dr. Pepper, M&M’s, Skittles, and Juicy Fruit, and returning partners such as Jeep, Ferrero, Kellogg’s, and Dairy Queen. TV spots will be running well past this weekend, with some 1.3 billion Fallen Kingdom packages on more than 1.5M displays featured around the world. One big stunt: Sending out the biggest Amazon delivery ever.
We’ve got a T-rex. From Isla Nublar to Los Angeles, @PrattPrattPratt and @BryceDHoward helped @JurassicWorld @Jeep’s unveil @Amazon’s largest delivery ever. pic.twitter.com/VOOz7o2tPu
— Jurassic World (@JurassicWorld) June 9, 2018
Fallen Kingdom also ranks up in the studio’s books as their largest media campaign ever worldwide, including a first-ever Turner takeover, a first ever week-long prime-time takeover on Discovery; and custom NBA playoff and World Cup spots. On April 14th, Fallen Kingdom took over Round 1 of the NBA Playoffs as the exclusive film sponsor, with a custom piece in every game and pre-game across ABC and ESPN. Universal partnered with ESPN on a spot featuring NBA All-Star and Toronto Raptor Kyle Lowry coming face-to-face with a Jurassic-sized opponent. Comcast NBCUniversal Symphony efforts included the first-ever episode takeover with NBC’s American Ninja Warrior; a custom Xfinity ticketing spot with the pic’s star Bryce Dallas Howard; and a Jurassic World-themed night on Telemundo. Also, Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon devoted a week to the sequel’s tie-in on his show, called Jurassic World: Fallon Kingdom.
As part of the Fallen Kingdom push, Universal Studios Hollywood held a 25th Anniversary event of Jurassic Park over three days, with talent and filmmakers, panels, and JW director, producer and scribe Colin Trevorrow. This was complete with a walk-through exhibit featuring costumes and props from the franchise, as well as booths showcasing Jurassic partners – the new virtual reality experience, the AR game Jurassic World Alive, the park-building game Jurassic World Evolution, photo booth opportunities, and Mattel toy displays. As we mentioned back in 1994, Jurassic Park was responsible for $1 billion revenue in consumer ancillary goods. At the end of the summer, the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios Hollywood will shutter with a new Jurassic World Ride to open in its place.
We already mentioned how it’s an anomaly period at the B.O., with two movies opening back-to-back to $100M-plus, the first time ever during a non-holiday period. Overall weekend ticket sales per ComScore amounted to $278.5M, +3% over last weekend’s huge $270.9M and 96% ahead of the same June period a year ago. Annual B.O. to date at $5.9 billion is pacing close to 9% ahead of the same Jan-June 24 frame in 2017. In addition, a number of summer pics shot past various century mark levels: These include Warner Bros/Village Roadshow’s Ocean’s 8 ($100.4M), Disney’s Solo: A Star Wars Story ($202.6M) and 20th Century Fox’s Deadpool 2 ($304.1M) and, of course, Incredibles 2 going over $300M. AMC boss Adam Aron is right: Not just his theater chain, but summer is truly on fire.
Studio-reported Sunday AM figures for weekend of June 22-24:
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3RD UPDATE, Saturday AM: Universal/Amblin’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom continues to improve, now looking at a $59M Friday –including last night’s $15.3M previews– and an estimated $145.6M opening at 4,475 theaters ahead of its projections, putting the dinosaur movie on better footing toward a $1 billion worldwide end-game. That’s projecting that the sequel does around a 2.5x multiple for $300M stateside, with $500M from overseas and $200M from China, and the feeling from our sources is that’s quite do-able.
Here’s how the top 10 films are looking per industry estimates for the weekend of June 22-24:
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As an industry we’ve become quite spoiled, and continually expect that sequels to movies which originally opened to $100M-plus (even $200M-plus) should always fare better at the B.O. than the first installment. Many Marvel sequels have set this precedent. And while some rivals like to ding Fallen Kingdom for opening at 30% less than Jurassic World’s $208.8M, we need to step back and realize a few things.
First of all, there isn’t some grand universe character-driven mythology in the Jurassic World/Jurassic Park movies ala Marvel and Star Wars. At their core they’re monster movies inherently embedded with a great sense of Spielbergian nostalgia, wonder, and ages-old man vs. nature theme (remember Jaws?). By that sub-genre measure, it stands to reason that ticket sales would be down on Fallen Kingdom.
While critics have zero patience for run-and-duck thrills, giving Fallen Kingdom a 50% Rotten Tomatoes score, audiences eat this popcorn up, and they’re giving the sequel a nice four stars, 82% overall positive on ComScore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak, and an A- CinemaScore, which is better than Steven Spielberg’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park (B+) and Joe Johnston’s Jurassic Park III (B-) and just under the double As earned by the first Jurassic Park and Jurassic World.
Universal, and the industry for that matter, were gobsmacked by the enormous success of Jurassic World three summers ago, with the pic’s tracking prior to release standing between $110M-$140M. So, isn’t it funny — that’s not too far from where this sequel is opening (which can claim the second-best domestic start for the franchise).
Also, -30% isn’t the worst drop for a sequel coming off a first installment that opened to $100M-plus: Disney’s Alice Through the Looking Glass, with a $26.8M three-day, was down 77% from Alice in Wonderland‘s $116.1M opening. In sum, the Jurassic World franchise is not damaged, and let’s not forget there’s a huge licensing component in the brand’s ancillaries. A year after the first Jurassic Park, Universal/MCA reported that the pic’s consumer product revenue across toys, clothing, video games, etc. amounted to $1 billion — and that was back in 1994.
However, Universal knew in advance that Fallen Kingdom wouldn’t carry the pent-up demand of the first chapter stateside, and planned accordingly on its investment by rolling out overseas first and creating momentum. Had the studio led with domestic, chances are a slower start here would have impacted the results of subsequent foreign territories. Also, this is the type of dazzle that burgeoning cinematic markets, such as China, crave. Fallen Kingdom is also a slightly different type of JW movie, darker in tone (lots of people getting gobbled up), with the second half of the pic’s action taking place outside of the franchise’s classic Isla Nublar.
For the marketplace and exhibition, it’s a great weekend at the box office, and if Fallen Kingdom is less than Jurassic World, well, theaters aren’t feeling that sting. As one exhibition source points out: This is the first time in B.O. history during a non-holiday period that two films have opened to north of $100M on back-to-back weekends. In addition, last week alone generated $400M at the box office, the third time this year after those weeks where Avengers: Infinity War and Black Panther launched. Weekly box office topped $400M twice last year, during the last two weeks of the year with Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. One financier remarks, “Fallen Kingdom could be the last $100M-plus opening until the holiday season. Maybe one of the other titles over-performs, but assuming that they perform as expected, this is the final mega pic for a while.”
Fifty-percent of the audience, according to CinemaScore, came to Fallen Kingdom because it’s a Jurassic Park movie; 22% bought tickets because of Chris Pratt, 11% for Bryce Dallas Howard, and 9% were fans of J.A. Bayona.
Fallen Kingdom cost $187M before P&A, per a Deadline source, and boasts a $185M promotional partner campaign more than double JW. The trailer first dropped during a Jurassic Worldwide Week, starting with a 15-second tease with the Seattle Seahawaks Game on Dec. 3 (with Pratt in attendance); worldwide logo projections in several cities and countries, including LA, NY, London, Chicago, Ireland, Houston, Peru, Milan, Philadelphia, Sweden, Colombia, San Francisco, Seattle, Rome, Washington D.C. and Korea; talent appearances; and finally, the trailer drop on Thursday Night Football. All of this culminated in 300M collectively. The third trailer counts 143M views, clicking past the 24-hour count of Black Panther and Solo: A Star Wars Story, and became an instant trending topic on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and was the #1 trending video on YouTube upon its debut. Fallen Kingdom trailered on the opening weekends of The Last Jedi, Black Panther, and Solo in-theater. The commercial for JEEP, Fallen Kingdom‘s promo partner, drew more views online (39.7M) following its Super Bowl drop than any movie trailer. RelishMix reports that Fallen Kingdom‘s social media universe is comprised of 611.3M followers, which includes JW‘s fans, across 37.2M Facebook fans, 130.4M Facebook video views, 11.6M Twitter followers, 409.4M YouTube views and 22.7M Instagram followers. Says RelishMix, “Credit the campaign for posting a wide variety of behind-the-scenes clips to keep fans engaged since last December. In fact, the only metric the campaign lags on is EOR (viral rate), currently 11:1, and while the usual is 26:1 by opening week, keep in mind that Universal has dropped an unusually enormous collection of official clips (40), which may be the most this year for a tentpole.” With 29M fans across Instagram, Twitter, and FB, Pratt is the social media star of Fallen Kingdom. “He’s been sharing BTS materials and, of late, his appearances on talk shows and the like. Pratt is one of those stars who is always ‘all in’ on the projects he’s involved with. And, the fans call him Star Lord and Andy from his days on Guardians of the Galaxy and NBC’s Parks & Rec, respectively,” says RelishMix. Bryce Dallas Howard follows with 1.3M and Jeff Goldblum with 1M. RelishMix praises what they call “The One-Two Punch of Pratt & Howard” teaming together on a number of online clips. Some of the videos have Pratt and Howard answering trivia, participating in traditional interviews, playing with JW toys, and this one on College Humor where they try to bring a dinosaur aboard a plane as a service animal (traffic 2M views)
Jurassic World and a Pixar release have co-existed once before, in June 2015, with neither getting significantly slowed at the B.O. Read: Inside Out opened to $90.4M in second place during JW‘s second weekend of $106.5M. While Incredibles 2 continues to do great in weekend 2 with $79.4M, -56%, it can be argued that the dinosaurs are stepping on the superheros’ capes a bit, with Fallen Kingdom increasing in its ticket sales and Incredibles 2, originally projected to gross between $91M-$100M, coming in lower. This despite the fact that both pics’ demos are quite different: the Pixar superhero sequel skews more female, with a large 54% under 25, while Fallen Kingdom is more males at 59%, with older guys over 25 leading the way at 37%. Overall, per CinemaScore, the over-25 number at Fallen Kingdom repped 62% to JW‘s 51%, which means the audience got older. CinemaScore shows slightly more females at Fallen Kingdom at 51% to JW, which leaned more toward guys.
Other notables this weekend: Vertical Entertainment and MoviePass Ventures’ Gotti is down an estimated 57% in weekend 2 with $733K and a running total of $3.2M. Attribute that hold to MoviePass members giving the pic a shot, and not any lousy defense that the audience meter on Rotten Tomatoes at 59% is higher and drawing crowds to the pic’s critically slammed 0% Rotten Tomatoes score. As we previously wrote, RT’s audience meter is broken, and can easily be manipulated by the same user or an onslaught of users. There’s nothing scientifically accurate about it. As of this time, the producers of Gotti never bothered to survey their audience reactions via a third party like CinemaScore or PostTrak, so we don’t really know what audiences think.
Sony Pictures Classics’ family drama Boundaries, with a 56% Rotten Tomatoes score, isn’t seeing a great theater average, with a current estimate of $5K, or $25K at five New York and Los Angeles locations. Adding insult to injury is the fact that Peter Fonda, who has a small roll in the movie, attracted the wrong type of attention to the pic this weekend with his tweet against the Trump administration and his insult toward Barron Trump.
2ND UPDATE: Industry estimates show Universal/Amblin’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom stomping to the lower end of its projections with a $55 million Friday and a $135M opening weekend. Meanwhile, Disney/Pixar’s Incredibles 2 is looking at a $25M second Friday, with a second weekend in the vicinity of the low-$80M range. More updates coming soon.
PREVIOUS UPDATE: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom grossed $15.3M on Thursday night per Universal, a better start from what we were seeing last night. Pic was in play at 3,600 theaters with showtimes starting at 7 PM. The J.A. Bayona-directed sequel expands to 4,450 venues today.
At this level, Fallen Kingdom is just below the preview nights of Spider-Man: Homecoming ($15.4M, $50.7M Friday, and $117M weekend), Iron Man 3 ($15.6M, $68.8M opening day, $174.1M opening) and above Thor: Ragnarok ($14.5M Thursday, $46.4M opening day, $122.7M opening). As we mentioned last night, Jurassic World three years ago posted a Thursday night of $18.5M which repped 22.5% of its $81.95M first day (also off 7PM showtimes) and that translated into a $208.8M weekend, which for six months in 2015 was an all-time record.
Tracking had the low-end of Fallen Kingdom starting at $130M/$135M-plus earlier this week. Fallen Kingdom opens with a lower Rotten Tomatoes score than its 2015 edition (71% fresh) and hopefully that doesn’t throw a roadblock in the sequel’s momentum this weekend. Considering the huge weekend that Jurassic World had in regards to its RT score, it was clearly critic-proof.
To date, after two weeks in release overseas, Fallen Kingdom has amassed $450M, which includes an estimated $170M from China. Sources tell Deadline that the production cost for Fallen Kingdom was $187M net before P&A.
Disney/Pixar’s Incredibles 2 in early figures this morning grossed $16.2M yesterday, -18% for a week’s take of $269.3M. To date that’s the sixth highest grossing Pixar movie at the domestic B.O. (and growing), behind Finding Dory ($486.2M), Toy Story 3 ($415M), Inside Out ($356.4M), Finding Nemo ($339.7M) and Up ($293M). Through its first week, Incredibles 2 is running 26% ahead Finding Dory in it’s first week.
Ranking No. 2 on Thursday was Warner Bros./Village Roadshow’s Ocean’s 8 with $2M, -15%, $29.1M in its second week, and a running total of $88.7M.
New Line’s Tag drew $1.4M, -15% from Wednesday for a week’s take of $22.1M. Further down in 7th place, there’s last Wednesday’s opener, Sony’s Superfly which earned $525K yesterday, $9.7M for the week, and $11.9M over nine days.
PREVIOUS EXCLUSIVE: Universal and Amblin Entertainment’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is on a course to earn around $12M+ tonight, and potentially north of $13M.
West coast shows started at 7PM and the evening has a way to go. Eastern time zone showtimes also began at 7PM. This forecast comes from Deadline sources, not Universal as the studio doesn’t report until tomorrow morning.
Should Fallen Kingdom remain at its current pace tonight, the J.A. Bayona-directed feature will file ahead of such previews as Fate of the Furious ($10.4M), Wonder Woman ($11M), and Guardians of the Galaxy ($11.2M). At 600 locations today, starting at 3:30PM local time, Jurassic World double features were held.
Jurassic World three years ago posted a Thursday night of $18.5M which repped 22.5% of its $81.95M first day (also off 7PM showtimes), which is the sixth highest Friday ever. The Colin Trevorrow-directed movie, which at the time was only expected to open to $110M-$140M, blew away those estimates for an unexpected, then all-time domestic record of $208.8M (before being unseated by Star Wars: Force Awakens six months later at $247.9M, which was then defeated by Avengers: Infinity War‘s $257.7M two months ago). And note the Rotten Tomatoes score at the time wasn’t super high for Jurassic World at 71% fresh, uncertified. Given the legacy appeal of the brand, audiences young and old flooded cinemas, giving Jurassic World an A, and moving the title at a 3x multiple for a final U.S./Canada haul of $652.2M. No one is expecting Fallen Kingdom to emulate Jurassic World since the previous installment arrived with an unprecedented amount of pent-up demand. That said, the low-end of opening projections for Fallen Kingdom start at $130M/$135M. Current Rotten Tomatoes is 53% Rotten.
Fallen Kingdom opens in 4,450 theaters tomorrow, including 3D, Imax and other premium large format screens.
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