Jurassic World: Colossal $500m box office gives dinosaur thriller biggest opening weekend in history
Jurassic World has stomped its way to the top of the international box office with a mammoth opening weekend thought to be over $500m.
The fourth film in the dinosaur franchise made over $500m around the world this weekend – making it the first film in history to do so.
In the US it recorded over $204.6m, giving it the second-biggest domestic opening weekend in history.
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According to Rentrak figures, Jurassic World almost doubled analysts' expected weekend box office between $125m – $135m, as it swatted away competition from Melissa McCarthy comedy Spy and action-adventure film San Andreas.
Already the rumoured $150m investment from Universal and Legendary Pictures to reboot the franchise looks to be money well spent – the film has broken Universal's record opening weekend set by Furious 7 earlier this year.
The T-Rex sized revenues – an average of $47,870 per cinema – sent Jurassic World ahead of the colossal opening weekend set by Avengers: Age of Ultron in April but fell just short of the record set by Marvel's first Avengers effort in 2012.
The opening weekend triumph sends the franchise's average box office to $243m – a figure that is likely to rise as international numbers are added to the total and moviegoers continue to see the film in the coming weeks. If the film builds on such momentum, it could become one of the top-five best performing franchises of all time (although it should be noted that such figures are not adjusted for inflation).
It makes what was already a good year for Universal even better after recouping huge profits from Furious 7 and Fifty Shades of Grey. The latter's impressive $147.9m opening weekend was the studio's best ever until now.
Jurassic World, starring Chris Pratt, sees Universal return to the park after a 14-year absence after Jurassic Park III's disappointing commercial and critical performance threatened to render the franchise extinct.
The decision to rekindle a familiar property looks likely to pay off – as it has done for a number of Hollywood studios in recent years – with Jurassic World already having made more than $20m more than Jurassic Park III.
A Morning Wire study found that after a 10-year absence from screens a new franchise reboot nearly always performed better at the box office than the previous installment.