This past weekend coincided with the Independence Day weekend in the United States. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, this period in the past few years has been almost completely monopolized by Universal Pictures, including "Fast and Furious 9" in 2021, "Minions: Despicable Me Prequel" in 2022, and "Despicable Me 4" in 2024. The only exception is 2023, which was taken by Disney's "Indiana Jones 5: The Wheel of Fortune".
This year, Universal Pictures' Jurassic World: Rebirth was released in 4,308 theaters in North America from the middle of last week. The three-day opening box office reached $91.5 million, making it the undisputed box office champion. In five days, the North American box office has reached $147.3 million. The lead actress, Scarlett Johansson, has thus become the Hollywood actor with the highest cumulative box office for starring films.
"Jurassic World: Resurgence" is the seventh film of this IP.
Jurassic World: Resurgence is the seventh film of the Jurassic IP. Although it topped the weekend box office charts without any suspense, compared with the previous works in the series, such an opening performance is actually declining; more precisely, the box office of this series is getting worse and worse. For example, Jurassic World, which was released in 2015, opened at a box office of 208 million US dollars in three days, which is more than double that of the new film ten years later, not to mention the increase in ticket prices in the past ten years, which means that the actual number of moviegoers has shrunk significantly.
There are also "Jurassic World 2" in 2018 and "Jurassic World 3" in 2022, which opened at the box office of $148 million and $145 million respectively in three days. Judging from this set of data, this reboot is not a success at the box office. It is no wonder that some media believe that this downward trend shows that this old IP, which began with "Jurassic Park" in 1994, has not been able to stop the general trend after launching multiple theme park rides and a large film series, and has shown a certain degree of fatigue, especially the aesthetic fatigue of young audiences - among the North American audiences in the first weekend of this film, only 36% were under the age of 25, lower than 56% of "Jurassic World 2" and 41% of "Jurassic World 3".
Stills from Jurassic World: Resurgence
Of course, it is a common phenomenon that decades-old IP works gradually lose their freshness and the box office decreases. This time, Universal Pictures has done a good job in cost control for "Jurassic World: Resurgence". The production cost of $180 million is much lower than the previous $250 million, which also reduces a lot of pressure on the film's ultimate global box office target. Profitability should not be a problem.
At present, it seems that "Jurassic World: Resurgence" is still very popular in overseas markets. It has earned 171 million US dollars in the first weekend box office in 82 overseas markets outside North America (the Chinese mainland market ranked first with 298 million yuan), bringing its global box office to 318 million US dollars. This is also the best opening performance of Hollywood movies in overseas markets since 2025, surpassing "Lilo and Stitch" and "Minecraft: The Movie".
In 2015, Universal Pictures rebooted the "Jurassic Park" series created by Steven Spielberg with a brand new cast under the creation of Colin Trevorrow. Ten years ago, "Jurassic World" achieved the best opening results in the history of the series with a global box office of 525 million US dollars and a North American box office of 208 million US dollars. However, when "Jurassic World 3" was released in 2022, although the global box office also exceeded 1 billion US dollars, it seemed to have come to an end in terms of the story, and the freshness of "Rotten Tomatoes" dropped to 29%, the lowest among the six works in the series.
Stills from Jurassic World: Resurgence
The reboot currently has a 52% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is still considered a "bad movie". The film is directed by Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Godzilla), and was written by David Koepp, the screenwriter of the original Jurassic Park I and II. It tells the story of a secret mission team's adventure to find dinosaur DNA to develop new drugs. It is led by Scarlett Johansson, and the cast also includes Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bay, Rupert Friend, etc.
Scarlett Johansson has become Hollywood's highest-grossing actor thanks to "Jurassic World: Resurgence."
It is worth mentioning that, after adding the first weekend box office of this film, the 18 films that the 40-year-old Scarlett Johansson has starred in so far have accumulated a total global box office of 14.8 billion US dollars, of which nearly two-thirds are from Marvel movies (she is also called Black Widow by Chinese fans because of her role as Black Widow), and other hits include the animated series "Sing" for which she is responsible for dubbing and this time "Jurassic World: Resurgence". 14.8 billion US dollars is enough for her to surpass Samuel Jackson (14.6 billion US dollars) and Robert Downey Jr. (14.2 billion US dollars), who are also on the list for starring in Marvel movies, and become the current No. 1 highest-grossing actor.
"Jurassic World: Resurgence" was also the only new film to be fully released last weekend. Ranking second on the weekend box office list is "F1: The Drive", where the word-of-mouth effect continues to ferment. The film earned $26.1 million in the second weekend, a 54% drop from the first weekend, which is a pretty good figure. At present, this film produced by Apple has a cumulative box office of $109 million in North America and a global box office of $293 million. It has officially surpassed Ridley Scott's 2023 epic "Napoleon" ($221 million) and became Apple Pictures' highest-grossing work worldwide. Since a considerable portion of the IMAX theaters in North America on Independence Day weekend were still reserved for "F1" rather than "Jurassic World: Resurgence", from this perspective, the latter's box office shrinkage is also largely due to the fact that "F1" has taken away this part of the resources.
The third place in the weekend box office list is "How to Train Your Dragon", which has already grossed $224 million in North America and nearly $500 million worldwide. The poorly performing Pixar animation "Earth Correspondents" is ranked fourth, with a total North American box office of only $54 million and a global box office of $96 million, making this $150 million film likely to become one of Pixar's most unprofitable works in history.
Danny Boyle's new horror film 28 Years Later ranked fifth on the box office list. Lilo & Stitch ranked sixth with a North American box office of $3.8 million last weekend, bringing the film's global total to $972 million (of which North America contributed $408 million), surpassing the already-discontinued Minecraft Movie (global box office of $954 million), becoming the world's best-selling Hollywood film so far in 2025.
"Lilo & Stitch" has become the world's highest-grossing Hollywood movie so far in 2025 with $972 million.
Of course, if non-Hollywood films are included, the highest-grossing film so far in 2025 is still "Nezha: The Devil Boy Conquers the Dragon King", which closed with 15.9 billion yuan. Historically, the highest-grossing films in the world have always been monopolized by Hollywood films, but this year's "Nezha 2" is likely to break this rule.
