By Janet H. Cho

The unlikely pairing of Walt Disney's live action Lilo & Stitch and Paramount's final Mission: Impossible, starring Tom Cruise, delivered the biggest-ever domestic Memorial Day weekend at the movies.

Domestic audiences flocked to Lilo & Stitch for a four-day box office haul of $183 million. International audiences added another $158.7 million, pushing the total to $341.7 million globally and making it the top weekend film around the world, according to Comscore.

Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning hauled in $77 million domestically and $127 million globally. The estimated $190 million total over the four-day weekend is the best Mission: Impossible opening in the franchise's history, with its opening in China still to come.

And Monday's final box office totals could come in even higher than current studio estimates, which could change those amounts.

It's a strong omen for the summer moviegoing season as Hollywood strains to recover from strikes that tore up the production and release schedule. Domestic box-office sales of $262 million this weekend, and $3.07 billion so far this year through Sunday, are 21% higher than they were this time last year, according to Comscore. Box office receipts are still 29% below where they were before the pandemic.

The weekend's two biggest films are expected to contribute to more than $325 million in total domestic box office sales, breaking the previous record of $314.3 million in 2013, when the weekend's offerings included Fast & Furious 6, with $117 million in ticket sales, and The Hangover Part III, which sold $50 million.

"This monumental comeback powered by Lilo & Stitch and Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning along with some of the strongest holdovers in history blew the doors off in what is now the biggest Memorial Weekend in history," Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian told Barron's.

Noting that Memorial Weekend 2024 was one of the worst in box office history, with $132.3 million in sales over four days , Dergarabedian said: "'If you build it, they will come' has never been truer, and this weekend the studios built some great movies."

Lilo & Stitch's better-than-expected $55 million gross on Friday included a record $14.5 million from Thursday's previews. That was better than Disney's live-action The Little Mermaid's $10.3 million and Aladdin's $7 million.

It raked in an average of $41,497 a theater over 4,410 theaters through Monday, according to Comscore.

Lilo & Stitch also notched this year's biggest box office opening day in Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, and Mexico, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Final Reckoning's estimated $63 million opening weekend included $24.8 million from 3,857 theaters on Thursday and Friday. Its opening surpassed Mission: Impossible Fallout, which opened with $61.2 million in 2018, and Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One, which opened with $54.7 million in 2023.

About 14% of global audiences saw Final Reckoning on IMAX, which sold $31 million in tickets through Monday and scored the second highest grossing global Memorial Day weekend ever, behind Cruise's Top Gun Maverick in 2022, according to Comscore.

As with previous Mission: Impossible films, Final Reckoning was among the most expensive films ever made, with a $400 million net budget before marketing. Dead Reckoning had a $291 million budget, Fallout had a $178 million budget, and Rogue Nation had a $150 million budget, according to BoxOfficeMojo. The original Mission: Impossible, released in 1996, had an $80 million budget.

Final Reckoning opens in China on May 30.

Warner Bros. Pictures' A Minecraft Movie, which opened April 4 but is still in theaters, is still the year's highest-grossing film domestically, with $420.9 million in sales.

Write to Janet H. Cho at janet.cho@dowjones.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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May 25, 2025 15:04 ET (19:04 GMT)

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