New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

On a seemingly unrelated note, Jurassic World’s first Monday was fairly decent. By decent, I mean that it earned $25.3 million. Yes, that’s more than the entire top 10 earned at this time last year. In fact, I would argue it’s a record if the facts technically don’t support the statement. The dinosaur chomper garnered $25.3 million on Monday, which is the third best Monday ever. That statement comes with a huge asterisk, though. The top two previous Mondays were both holiday-inflated. One was $26.8 million for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – stop thinking about the unintentionally hilarious refrigerator scene and focus on what I’m saying – that occurred on Memorial Day. The other was Spider-Man 2’s $27.7 million, which came on July 5th. So, Jurassic Park grossing $25.3 million on a random Monday is much more impressive as a box office feat.

That brings us to yesterday, when the reasonable expectation was for the film to slow down a bit, even though Tuesday is the biggest box office day of the week. After all, films earning revenue totals this large can experience solid daily declines while still performing majestically. Keeping this in mind, Jurassic World fell 4% (and a million dollars) to $24.3 million. That’s the third biggest Tuesday ever yet I would once again argue it’s a record. The only two better Tuesday performers, Transformers at $27.9 million and The Amazing Spider-Man at $35 million, both earned their revenue on July 3rd. So, holiday inflation again blurs the issue. Also, both of those films were enjoying their first full days in theaters, which gave them opening day rush from fanboys. Jurassic World was on its fifth full day in theaters, making its box office tally exponentially stronger.

In other words, I can make an argument that every single day of Jurassic World’s run thus far has broken some major box office record. Its pace is so torrid that reaching $300 million in a week is not entirely out of the question. It currently stands at $258.5 million with two days to go, meaning it needs to average $20.8 million on Wednesday and Thursday to accomplish that unprecedented feat. As a reminder, The Avengers did it in nine days, so Jurassic World is going to break the record of fastest to $300 million. The only question is whether it’s in seven days or eight. As an aside, this is the one domestic record that I believe Star Wars 7 has a real chance at breaking. Its late December opening weekend will prevent it from breaking the three-day record.

Finally, there's one other note I'd like to make about the weekday performance of Jurassic World to place it in perspective. On August 5th last year, Guardians of the Galaxy grossed $11.9 million. That was the single best revenue total for any Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday for the entire summer. Jurassic World has more than doubled that number. Twice. In two days.

As for the rest of the top ten, well, I’ll get to each of them at some point. Since the other nine films have combined revenue of $7.8 million, wasting any space on them today is the equivalent of making you sit through five opening acts to watch the Rolling Stones play. There’s only one story in the box office world right now, and it’s about a dinosaur theme park.

Continued:       1       2