Box office: ‘Lilo & Stitch’ opens with record-setting $183 million

Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” scored the biggest Memorial Day opening of all time, hauling in $183 million over the four-day weekend to lap Tom Cruise’s eighth and final “Mission Impossible” film, according to updated industry estimates released Monday.

The children’s science fiction comedy is a live-action remake of Disney’s 2002 “Lilo & Stitch,” which was fully animated. The franchise has also featured numerous sequels and a television show. The new film was directed by Dean Fleischer Camp and stars 7-year-old Maia Kealoha as a young girl who adopts an alien experiment she mistakes for a dog and names Stitch.

Meanwhile, “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” opened with $77.5 million this weekend in theaters in the United States and Canada, Comscore reported. That’s the largest opening for the long-running spy franchise, which began in 1996, topping 2018’s “Mission: Impossible — Fallout.”

Together, the two films fueled the biggest Memorial Day weekend box office in North American history, with about $325 million in tickets likely to be sold by the end of Monday’s holiday. The previous record was 2013’s $306 million, led by “Fast & Furious 6” and “The Hangover Part III.”

Third place went to last weekend’s top-grossing film, “Final Destination Bloodlines,” which grossed $23.9 million Friday through Monday in its second weekend in theaters.

“Thunderbolts” was fourth with $11.8 million in its fourth week, followed by “Sinners,” which added another $11 million in its sixth week.

Rounding out the top 10 domestic releases were “The Last Rodeo” ($6.2 million), “Friendship” ($5.7 million), “A Minecraft Movie” ($2.7 million), “The Accountant 2” ($2.5 million) and “Hurry Up Tomorrow” ($860,000).

–City News Service