'Lilo & Stitch,' 'Mission: Impossible' rack up nearly $500 million in ticket sales

The live-action remake of “Lilo & Stitch” and the adrenaline-fuelled “Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning” racked up a combined $494.2 million in worldwide ticket sales over the weekend.

Lilo & Stitch set a domestic box office record for the first three days of the holiday weekend, surpassing 2022's Top Gun: Maverick, according to Comscore. That helped push US and Canadian ticket sales to a record $262 million for the long weekend.

The Disney remake posted one of the strongest openings for a live-action adaptation, behind only the 2019 version of The Lion King ($192 million) and 2017’s Beauty and the Beast ($175 million). The success breathes new life into a franchise that generated $2.6 billion in consumer product sales last year and over half a billion hours of viewing on Disney+.

Meanwhile, Tom Cruise’s return as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning brought in $190 million worldwide, including $63 million in the US and Canada. That outpaces the franchise’s previous top-grosser, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, according to Paramount Pictures' domestic distribution head Chris Aronson.

Paramount supported the film with a global promotional tour and a targeted creator campaign that included Cruise himself. More than 40 per cent of the audience was between 18 and 34 — a notable shift for a franchise that has traditionally appealed to older moviegoers.

“The sheer spectacle of what Tom and McQ put in as the major ingredients of this film are truly remarkable,” said Aronson, referring to director Christopher McQuarrie.

The strong performance marks a promising start to the summer movie season, which typically accounts for 35 per cent to 40 per cent of the annual domestic box office.