Memorial Day weekend is nearly upon us, and studio executives and theater owners are licking their lips for more reasons than the promise of good barbecue as Disney‘s Lilo & Stitch and Paramount’s Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning prepare to take the box office by storm. Last year, Memorial Day weekend quickly ran out of gas as George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road spinoff Furiosa stalled at the box office, nearly getting side-swiped by Sony’s Garfield movie. If there’s anything Hollywood hates more than Garfield hates Mondays, it’s losing ticket sales during one of the most significant blockbuster celebrations at the domestic box office.
Similar to Barbenheimer or Glicked Weekend (a name I can’t abide by), Disney and Paramount hope theatergoers are game for Stitch: Impossible, a double-bill that includes Lilo & Stitch and Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning. Analysts say the combined global earnings for both films could reach $485 million. The breakdown is $245 million for Lilo & Stitch, while Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is eyeing $210 million. If everything goes according to plan, that’s almost half a billion dollars during Memorial Day weekend.
Lilo & Stitch has $20 million in pre-sales, which is roughly half of what Moama 2 and 2018’s The Lion King had before opening. The pre-sale numbers beat the Super Mario Bros Movie, The Little Mermaid, and A Minecraft Movie. Historically, the biggest Memorial Day Weekend earner is Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick at $160M, with Lilo & Stitch eyeing $160.5M. Meanwhile, the best Disney film opening is the second-best Memorial Day opener, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which sailed the Seven Seas with $139.8M.
Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch stars Maia Kealoha as Lilo in reimagining the mouse-eared studio’s 2002 animated classic. Other players include Zach Galifianakis, Billy Magnussen, Tia Carrere, Courtney B. Vance, Sydney Agudong, and Chris Sanders as the voice of Stitch. The plot focuses on a young, parentless girl who adopts a “dog” from the local pound, utterly unaware that it’s supposedly a dangerous scientific experiment that’s taken refuge on Earth and is now hiding from its creator and those who see it as a menace.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning tells the second half of the story that began in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, with Ethan Hunt out to destroy an AI system called The Entity, which is housed in a sunken Russian stealth submarine. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and Dead Reckoning writer/director Christopher McQuarrie remains at the helm, working from a screenplay he crafted with Erik Jendresen. The official synopsis is very simple: Our lives are the sum of our choices. Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
How much money will Lilo & Stitch and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning make this Memorial Day Weekend? Will you see either film at the theater this weekend? Let us know in the comments section below.
