To Infinity And Beyond: Disney's 'Lightyear' Opens Big, Adds To Box-Office Surge

With three major summer movie releases hitting more than $44 million each over the weekend, the theatrical movie business has a lot to cheer about.

Joining Paramount Pictures’ “Top Gun: Maverick” and Universal Pictures, “Jurassic World: Dominion” was Walt Disney’s “Lightyear” -- a spinoff from the popular animated “Toy Story” franchise -- with a massive $51 million in North American box office revenue in its opening weekend, according to Comscore.

“Jurassic World” remained tops in its second week – at $58.7 million.

“Top Gun” wasn’t far behind -- taking in another healthy $44 million -- good for a North American box office total of $466.2 million after four weeks of release. Globally the movie is at $885.2 million.

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“Jurassic” is now at $249.8 million for U.S. and Canada, and globally has hit $622.2 million. Comscore says the movie one of only eight Hollywood films to exceed the $500 million mark during the pandemic era, of which three are Universal films. 

“Lightyear” follows Disney-Marvel’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” -- which started up seven weeks ago -- and has now grossed $405 million domestically and $537 million internationally, giving it a total of $943 million globally.

Starting in the second quarter -- April 1 through June 18 -- national TV advertising spending for U.S. theatrical marketers is up 30% to an estimated $161.6 million (yielding 18.8 billion impressions from 64,336 airing), according to iSpot.tv. Ad spend was $124.4 million (12.7 billion impressions, 43,830 airings) for the same time period in 2021.

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