Stitch ate the box office (Ethan Hunt helped)

Following Sinners’ super-powered spring box office (now at $339 million), the 2025 Memorial Day weekend box office ushers in summer with a record-breaking $322 million four-day holiday haul, beating the previous record set on Memorial Day weekend in 2014, when Fast & Furious 6, The Hangover Part III, and Star Trek Into Darkness led the weekend. This may be the best post-pandemic indicator we’ve had that the box office is finally recovering (just in time for a recession?) to pre-2020 levels. 

Lilo & Stitch led the way with an estimated $183 million four-day domestic bow, beating the previous record set by Top Gun: Maverick in 2022 (Lilo logged $145.5 million for the traditional three-day, Friday-Sunday frame). Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning came in second with an estimated $77 million four-day opening ($63 million three-day), which is a franchise best. Both movies opened in line with expectations, and the weekend overall was further boosted by decent holds from films like Sinners, which is still decreasing by less than 50% week over week—this movie has legs so long they start in outer space—and Thunderbolts*, which is holding up on par with a superhero movie with decent word of mouth, indicating some repeat viewings and fence sitters catching it in weeks 3-4.

Unsurprisingly, Lilo & Stitch cornered the nostalgia market, with young Millennials/old Zoomers turning out for the film—even the kid-free ones, indicating that nostalgia is STRONG—after growing up on the original and its subsequent animated Disney Channel show. This is going to be a billion-dollar baby for Disney and given its comparably modest budget of $100 million—it was originally planned as a direct-to-streaming project—Lilo & Stitch is a HUGE win for the Mouse. 

Things are more complicated for Final Reckoning, with a budget reportedly in the $300-400 million range. It’s a longer road to profitability, though one thing about franchise films is that every new movie in the franchise sends the older ones shooting up the streaming/VOD charts, so Paramount is also making money on the library while Final Reckoning is still in theaters. Will Final Reckoning itself make money theatrically? 

Well, its worldwide opening weekend is an estimated $204 million, which is a great start, and they don’t have direct competition opening for a few weeks. This week has Karate Kid: Legends, which is more of a nostalgia-driven, family-friendly proposition, and then on June 6 is Ballerina, which competes more directly for the action market. So M:I has a couple weeks to power-earn before getting into a fist fight with John Wick’s little cousin. We’ll see how it holds up in week two, as that will tell the tale. 

If it does hold up in week two (sub 50% drop), Final Reckoning could perform comparably to 2018’s Fallout, which made $791 million. If the budget is closer to $300 million than $400 million, that could just edge it into profitability, not counting marketing, which is a whole other kettle of fish that exists on a different part of the Paramount ledger. Still, when making these movies they should remember no M:I film has ever cracked a billion dollars and plan accordingly.

Meanwhile, Lilo & Stitch doesn’t have any direct competition until June 13, when How to Train Your Dragon opens. Expect Stitch to destroy the box office unabated for the next three weeks. And though Disney paused the Tangled remake after Snow White’s disastrous performance, I bet they restart the remake machine sooner rather than later, they’ll just announce a new slate of films gauged to target the audience who turned up for Lilo & Stitch. An Emperor’s New Groove remake will be announced any minute now. 

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