Stichin: Mission!
Disney’s live-action redo of Lilo & Stitch and Tom Cruise’s final Mission: Impossible movie, from Paramount and Skydance, fueled the biggest Memorial Day weekend of all time as attendance skyrocketed across all demos.
Lilo & Stitch blew away all expectations with a record-smashing, four-day domestic debut of $192.7 million, and a jaw-dropping $361.3 million globally, while Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opened to a series-best $79 million domestically and a franchise-high $191 million globally, according to weekend actuals (M:I’s final domestic tally was up from Sunday’s estimate of $77.5 million). The numbers include a three-day weekend gross of $145.5 million for Lilo and $64 million for Final Reckoning. On Memorial Day itself, Lilo earned a near-record $37 million.
The previous best Memorial Day frame in terms of overall revenue belonged to the $306 million in ticket sales collected in 2013 when Fast & Furious 6 zoomed to $117 million, followed by The Hangover Part III with $50 million. This year also marked the best showing for two Memorial Day titles going up against each other. In 2007, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End opened to $140 million over the holiday frame, followed by Shrek the Third with $67 million.
While the mashup isn’t quite the same cultural phenomenon that Barbenheimer was in July 2023, the potent combo of the two movies can’t be ignored in terms of conquering and dividing.
The female-fueled Lilo was always expected to beat the latest male-driven M:I title, but no one imagined it would hit these heights and, in an ironic twist, see Lilo & Stitch supplant Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick ($160 million) to rank as the biggest Memorial Day opener of all time, not adjusted for inflation. That’s not the only irony: Cruise-starring and Steven Spielberg-directed The Minority Report was in a dead heat with the original animated Lilo & Stitch when they opened opposite each other in June 2002. Minority Report prevailed by a hair.
In North America, Lilo also zoomed to the second-biggest gross of all time for any four-day holiday weekend behind the $242 million opening of Marvel and Disney’s Black Panther and the third-biggest debut ever for a Disney live-action title, both domestically and globally, behind Beauty and the Beast and crown holder The Lion King, not adjusted for inflation. The film also pushed Disney passed $2 billion in worldwide ticket sales, the first studio to do so this year.
Three weeks ago, Lilo & Stitch was tracking to open to $120 million. On Thursday, that number had grown to $165 million. Then it came in even higher. The reason? Thank members of Gen Z and millennials, which, together, cover age groups 13 to 44. (Millennials 35 and under were more interested than their older counterparts.)
Stitch isn’t just drawing interest from families; to the contrary, 56 percent of ticket buyers were non-parents and kids, far higher than the norm, according to PostTrak. Interest exploded among teenage girls and younger women adults, who grew up on the first movie and resulting TV and streaming shows about a Hawaiian girl with a fraught family life who adopts an adorable, albeit trouble-making, dog-like alien. Box office pundits say the nostalgia factor ran red hot, just as it did among millennials and Gen Zers for Disney’s live-action Aladdin, which made $1.1 billion in global ticket sales after getting non-families. Rideback produced both Lilo and 2019’s Aladdin.
It is also playing to a notably diverse audience. Latinos, the most frequent moviegoers in the U.S., made up 33 percent of ticket buyers, while the film scored the biggest opening ever for a live-action Disney reimagining across Latin America.
Both films benefited from strong scores from critics and glowing audience exits, including five out of five stars from moviegoers polled by industry-leading service PostTrak. Lilo has a Rotten Tomatoes critics score of 70 percent and nabbed an A CinemaScore from audiences.
Final Reckoning — which had a lock on Imax screens — more than made up for the lackluster $54.7 million five-day bow of Dead Reckoning, as well as supplanting the $61.2 million three-day launch of Fallout to set a new franchise opening record. M:I movies have never been big openers since diehard fans are usually older adults, and particularly older males. Ticket buyers over the age of 55 made up the largest chunk of the holiday weekend audience (a whopping 54 percent), followed by the coveted 18 to 24 demo at 18 percent, according to PostTrak. Cruise’s film, directed by his go-to partner Christopher McQuarrie, boasts a current Rotten Tomatoes score of 80 percent and earned an A- CinemaScore. Imax theaters generated a franchise-record $30.1 million to the global pot; McQuarrie relied heavily on Imax cameras when making the movie.
“This weekend was one for the history books! Congratulations to every filmmaker, every artist, every crew member and every single person who works at the studios,” Cruise wrote early Tuesday morning on social media. (The actor-producer has become something of a theatrical ambassador since the pandemic and is generous about promoting other films. He also thanked Paramount and David Ellison’s Skydance, which is being stymied in its bid to buy Paramount Global because of a tussle with the Trump administration over a CBS News story. “And, most of all, THANK YOU to audiences everywhere — for whom we all serve and for all whom we all love to entertain.”
Added Paramount domestic chief of distribution Chris Aronson: “Mission accomplished. “This is a remarkable result for the eighth title in a franchise that’s 30 years in the making.”
But a major challenge in terms of Final Reckoning‘s financial success is its $400 million net budget before marketing — making it one of the most expensive films ever made — although Paramount insiders note that each new installment increases the value of the entire library, including a spike in home entertainment sales and rentals of previous titles. Conversely, Lilo & Stitch cost a net $100 million to make.
Overseas, Lilo & Stitch likewise beat M:I with stellar $178.6 million opening versus $127 million for Final Reckoning (since it isn’t a holiday offshore, those numbers are through Sunday). For Lilo, Mexico led with $27 million, followed by the U.K. ($17 million), Brazil ($12.2 million) and China ($9.5 million). The pic is softer in Southeast Asia, where M:I is picking up the slack. Conversely, M:I is soft in Latin America.
The M:I movie began rolling out in a handful of major markets, albeit it via previews, last weekend for a foreign tally of $191 million through Sunday and $204.5 million through Sunday. Top markets to date include South Korea, where it has amassed $12.7 million. This weekend’s tally was around $5 million, according to the country’s box office reporting system. Japan follows with $11 million, including last weekend’s unspecified previews, the U.K. ($10.7 million) and India, ($9 million including previews).