Amid a deep, months-long slump, the Memorial Day box office in 2024 was the worst seen by theaters in nearly three decades. But in a night-and-day flip, Memorial Day 2025 could be the best ever.
While last year saw the “Mad Max: Fury Road” prequel “Furiosa” flop despite strong reviews, this holiday brings a pair of franchise films with plenty of hype: Disney’s remake of “Lilo & Stitch” and Paramount’s series finale “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”
Currently, box office tracking has “Lilo & Stitch” generating one of the top five biggest opening weekends in Memorial Day history before inflation adjustment, with projections for the four-day period ranging between $120 million and $135 million. Disney’s internal projections sit on the low end of that range at $100-120 million.
Rival distributors tell TheWrap they expect the remake to not only beat tracking but potentially challenge the $160.5 million Memorial Day record set three years ago by “Top Gun: Maverick.”
If that ends up being the case, this weekend could challenge for the overall Memorial Day weekend record before inflation adjustment, which was set at $314 million in 2013 by a group of films led by “Fast & Furious 6” and “The Hangover Part III.”
“What a total 180 this year is going to be compared to last year,” said Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “There’s a little caution around predicting whether this is going to be a record Memorial Day weekend, but it at least has all the tools to contend for it with two really strong new releases and films like ‘Sinners’ that are still going strong.”
Shrugging off “Snow White”
If the spring bomb of Disney’s “Snow White” gave anyone the notion that the future of Disney’s remake series — wildly lucrative but reviled in some quarters online — was in doubt, “Lilo & Stitch” will put that to rest.
“Snow White” was based on a film that, while a major part of cinema history, hasn’t maintained much contemporary clout, but “Lilo & Stitch” is being released right at the point where nostalgia for movies reaches its peak, around 20-25 years after their release.
That was seen earlier this month with the 20th anniversary re-release of “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith,” which despite being part of the maligned “Star Wars” prequel trilogy made an impressive $42.2 million worldwide in just one weekend thanks to nostalgic millennials who saw the film as kids and teens back in 2005.
“Lilo & Stitch” is similarly driven by that millennial nostalgia, as many of those who saw the 2002 Disney animated film as children now have kids of their own and will be flocking to theaters this weekend to relive those memories.
Of course, one doesn’t need to be in their 30s or 40s to be the prime audience for this film. As Disney’s marketing blitz has shown, there is a global, enduring adoration for Stitch and his brand of adorable chaos. As critic William Bibbiani noted in his review of the remake for TheWrap, Stitch is a precursor to the Minions, who built up “Despicable Me” and Illumination with their gibberish and endless hijinks. It’s a form of slapstick that rises above cultural barriers all wrapped up in a cute, easily marketable package.
That’s why the marketing for “Lilo & Stitch” has been light on Lilo or any of the other human characters, simply flaunting for months how much the CGI alien resembles his hand-drawn counterpart, while Chris Sanders, writer-director of the original “Lilo & Stitch,” returns as his voice actor.
Critics have been kinder to “Lilo & Stitch” than “Snow White” and other recent Disney remakes, giving the film a 74% score on Rotten Tomatoes. While few reviews put it alongside the original, the consensus is the film captures its predecessor’s core themes about found family. That, combined with the Stitch hijinks promised by TV spots and trailers, should be enough to put this remake in contention for a $1 billion-plus global run.
A Final “Mission”
The picture is a bit murkier for “Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the supposedly final installment of a series that helped make Tom Cruise the last big star of Hollywood and formed the seed of a partnership between Paramount and Skydance that has culminated in a pending merger.
The reason why the outlook is so murky is because “The Final Reckoning,” perhaps more than any other film, had its production process and the budget supporting it disrupted by the 2023 actors’ strike, which began right as Cruise and Paramount released this film’s predecessor, “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning,” amidst work on the finale. Those delays caused the budget on the movie to reportedly rise to close to $400 million.
In terms of reviews, “The Final Reckoning” finds itself in the same position as Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*:” still mostly positive, but not nearly as effusive as past installments during the franchise’s peak. The film has a 79% score on Rotten Tomatoes, the first film since “Mission: Impossible III” in 2005 to earn an RT score below 90%.
On the plus side, tracking remains quite strong for “The Final Reckoning,” and if it meets projections for an $80-million four-day opening, that will be enough to be the best domestic debut before inflation adjustment for a “Mission: Impossible” film. Paramount is projecting slightly lower than that at $75 million, but that would also still be enough for a franchise record.
Also playing to its advantage is that “The Final Reckoning” is a PG-13 action film, a unique offering even against well-receive competition like the gory “Final Destination: Bloodlines.” While more action lies ahead with the upcoming release of Sony’s “Karate Kid: Legends” and Lionsgate’s “John Wick” spinoff “Ballerina,” neither of those films have a scale or star power equivalent to what Cruise offers as Ethan Hunt.
There had been some hope two years ago that “Dead Reckoning” would benefit from renewed interest in Cruise triggered by the historic success of “Top Gun: Maverick,” but that was dashed as the film grossed $565.6 million, well short of what the previous three “Mission” films amassed, including the $784 million franchise record set by 2018’s “Mission: Impossible — Fallout.”
Paramount insiders chalk that up to “Dead Reckoning” getting squeezed out by the cultural juggernaut of “Barbenheimer,” as the allure of seeing “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” as a double feature eclipsed even Cruise’s brand of big-screen spectacle. Those insiders point out that prior to “Dead Reckoning,” “Mission” films were known to leg out for weeks in theaters, and they feel confident “The Final Reckoning” can perform more like its 2010s predecessors.
While “The Final Reckoning” is a far darker, bleaker film than past “Mission” movies, it still has plenty of gripping action scenes, culminating in a much-marketed climax in which Cruise rode on the wing of a biplane. As long as that action delivers what audiences want, this film could still collect a respectable global total and perhaps even turn a theatrical profit despite its strike-inflated price tag.
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