Weekend box office: Dominion’s $145-million debut drives second-best weekend of 2022

June 13, 2022

Top Gun: Maverick

Jurassic World: Dominion posted an excellent $145 million over the weekend to start its domestic run, according to Universal’s final numbers released this morning. That’s a shade better than the $142.1 million they projected on Sunday morning, and within a couple of percent of our model’s consolidated prediction on Friday morning. That’s a very satisfactory result, however one looks at it, with a theater average comfortably over $30,000, and the second-best opening of the year behind Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. With Top Gun: Maverick posting another $51.9 million (easily the best third weekend of the year for any film), domestic theaters brought in more than $200 million over the weekend for only the second time in 2022.

Here’s how the final domestic weekend numbers shaped up (click on the image for the full chart of films reporting)…



Dominion’s $145-million start is almost identical to the $148 million earned by Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom on its opening weekend back in 2018, although that film played in slightly fewer theaters, 4,475 to 4,676. Both films are well behind Jurassic World, which debuted with $208.8 million in 2015—at the time the all-time biggest opening. So there’s an argument that the strength of the franchise is on the wane, and mixed reviews may limit the run of the new film: it has a critics’ score of just 31% on Rotten Tomatoes, one of the worst among recent films, but an A- CinemaScore and 81% audience approval on Rotten Tomatoes. Its target at this point is something around $400 million domestically.

Top Gun: Maverick is already at $395 million and counting, and should surpass $500 million relatively easily. It was down 42% in its third weekend compared to a 29% drop on its second weekend. The reason for the sharper decline is almost certainly because Jurassic World: Dominion took over the IMAX and other Premium Large Format screens. Last weekend, those premium tickets accounted for around 30% of Top Gun’s ticket sales. This weekend that share was down to around 2.5%. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that theaters put Top Gun back on premium screens in a week or two if Jurassic World isn’t selling out shows any more.

Overall, the weekend ended up right in line with expectations, with some surprises tucked in the top 10. The biggest surprise was Firestarter jumping back up to eighth place in the chart. That’s reportedly due to it playing as a double-bill with Jurassic World: Dominion at drive-in movie theaters.

Overall, with over $200 million in the bank from this weekend, and Lightyear opening on Friday, the theatrical business is looking back to something approaching normal, and should stay that way through the end of July. After that, August is still looking very soft… but more on that in my market prediction update later this week.

Before I go, one quick piece of housekeeping. Due to some personal commitments I wasn’t able to publish my weekend analysis on Sunday morning as usual this week. That might happen a few more times before the Summer is out, and I can’t always predict exactly when it will happen. Whenever possible, I’ll give a heads up in my Friday column.

- Studio weekend actuals
- All-time biggest weekends - All-time top-grossing movies in North America
- All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

Bruce Nash,