If you’re wondering why they’re continuing to make Jurassic Park movies over and over again despite the quality being consistently sub-par, look no further than Jurassic World: Rebirth, which is now mirroring the box office haul of the last poorly reviewed Jurassic Park movie, Jurassic World: Dominion.
Box office estimates for Jurassic World: Rebirth continue to climb. The film did $25 million in Thursday previews, and that will rise on Friday. The outpacing of expectations indicates that Rebirth may end up nabbing a $145 million opening in the US.
Why is that number key? Because a $145 million haul would exactly mirror the domestic opening weekend of Jurassic World: Dominion, which went on to make $1.001 billion by the end of its global run, almost two-thirds of that outside the US. So, if the figures hold, Rebirth might hit that as well.
This is a prime example of a split opening between critics and audiences, where lower critic scores have little effect on audience enjoyment and a big box office. The split of these two movies on Rotten Tomatoes sits at:
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Jurassic World: Dominion – 29% critic, 77% audience
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Jurassic World: Rebirth – 51% critic, 72% audience
The success of Rebirth is additionally impressive because the series has switched over from its core cast of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard to being led by Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey. Great actors, but generally not thought of as massive box office draws, despite their fame.
If you look back even further, even lower audience scores cannot stop the Jurassic Park behemoth. 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom got a 47% critic score and an also-bad 48% audience score. Want to guess how much money it made? $1.3 billion. The original Jurassic World, which was well-liked by both groups, made $1.67 billion.
The point being, audiences are going to show up for a Jurassic Park movie (now Jurassic World) no matter what. Yes, the box office has “dropped” over time, but…dropped to a billion dollars. Few other franchises can boast that, and Jurassic Park has outlived the box office runs of most recent Marvel and Star Wars films at this point.
It is not really a question at all whether another Jurassic World movie will be made, and best guess is probably another three years from now. Whether it stars these current actors remains to be seen, as it could be the start of another Pratt multi-film run led by Johansson. Given its performance, I’m sure everyone would love to return for more, including its director, Gareth Evans, where this is his first Jurassic film after directing several monster movies before this, including Godzilla.
Jurassic World: Rebirth is a huge hit once again proving that critics don’t always matter (somewhat of a bummer as a critic myself, but it’s true).
