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New York
CNN Business
—
The end of the Jurassic era arrived with a deafening roar at the box office.
“Jurassic World: Dominion,” the sixth and supposedly last film in the Jurassic Park franchise, brought in an estimated $143.3 million for its North America opening this weekend. The Universal Pictures’ film took the top spot from “Top Gun: Maverick” and represents one of the highest-grossing openings of the year so far.
The opening for “Dominion” roughly falls in line with the debut of the prior film in the series, “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” which opened to $148 million in 2018. That’s impressive considering how different the box office marketplace is compared to just five years ago.
Another impressive feat is that the film found an audience despite some pretty awful reviews. “Dominion” notched the lowest critics score of the series on review site Rotten Tomatoes, bringing in a 30% rating.
The big weekend adds to the film’s worldwide haul of $389 million since opening overseas last week.
The Universal film, which explores a world in which dinosaurs are running amok all over Earth, is a part of one of the most successful brands in Hollywood — a franchise that has made roughly $5 billion at the global box office since 1993’s “Jurassic Park.”
“Dominion” also had the added bonus of being marketed with both finality and nostalgia.
Universal billed it as the last movie of “the Jurassic era” and brought back the three stars from the original “Jurassic Park,” Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, alongside the new leads of the series, played by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.
That appeared to be enough to get moviegoers to theaters despite the bad reviews. Yet the lack of critical acclaim may hamper those totals as the film goes forward in the weeks to come.
Elsewhere at the box office, “Top Gun: Maverick” is still flying high.
The film, which brings back Tom Cruise in his most iconic role as fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, made an estimated $50 million domestically for its third weekend, which is just a 44% drop from last week.
“Maverick,” which broke records over Memorial Day weekend and had an incredible hold on audiences in its second week, has made $747 million around the world so far.
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