‘Lilo & Stitch’ teams with Tom Cruise and ‘Mission Impossible’ for a monster Memorial Day weekend

AP Lilo Stitch teamed with Tom Cruise for a monster Memorial Day box office weekend Disney s live action version of Lilo Stitch earned a staggering million in North American theaters according to studio estimates Sunday the second biggest domestic opening of the year after A Minecraft Movie The movie is a faithful remake of the original s story of a six-legged alien and a Hawaiian girl that has created a big cult following in the decades since But the duo was no little brother and sister to the better-known figures in Disney s parade of live-action remakes It was second only to the million opening of The Lion King in and outshot all projections wowing box office observers This overperformed by a huge margin declared Paul Dergarabedian senior media analyst for Comscore Lilo Stitch surpassed Cruise s Top Gun Maverick as the biggest domestic Memorial Day weekend earner ever and global estimates put it past million Paramount Pictures Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning the eighth and possibly last appearance of Cruise as Ethan Hunt in a nearly three-decade run was a distant second but still brought in a franchise record million through Sunday outearning Mission Impossible Fallout which opened domestically to million in And the spy thriller with Cruise s frequent partner Christopher McQuarrie in the director s chair for the fourth time in the franchise was the top global earner with million Cruise has been a relentless global promoter of his movies and he s been the industry s loudest cheerleader for going to theaters This film like its predecessor in the series premiered at the Cannes Film Festival The spectacle of what Tom and McQ put on the screen it screams theatrical declared Chris Aronson Paramount s president of domestic distribution The product they put out just screams This has to be in theaters The previous film s Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One launched with a franchise-best million over five days in a July opening though it came in shy of industry expectations with a million haul over a three-day weekend This weekend as a whole blasted past last year when the Memorial Day box office saw just million for all films in the Friday-through-Monday span And it appears that it will top as the best Memorial Day the industry has had with an estimated overall total of million Critics were wearying of Disney s live action and CGI remakes of its animated classics Mark Kennedy of The Associated Press called this Lilo Stitch utterly unnecessary There were signs audiences were agreeing Snow White opened to a sleepy million in March and several similar releases were tepid But this film tapped into a latent love for oddball pairing It also furthered a trend that includes A Minecraft Movie of PG-rated films outpacing the PG- movies that usually dominate made all the more impressive by the lower kids ticket prices the more family-oriented films bring Dergarabedian credits a strong lead-up of films that have put people in theaters and remain the box office top including Minecraft Sinners Thunderbolts and Final Destination Bloodlines I can t think of a better lineup of films to ignite leading up to Memorial weekend to ignite the spark that got us this record-breaking holiday frame he explained Top movies by domestic box office With final domestic figures being published Monday this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U S and Canadian theaters according to Comscore Lilo Stitch million Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning million Final Destination Bloodlines million Thunderbolts million Sinners million The Last Rodeo million Friendship million A Minecraft Movie million The Accountant million Hurry Up The following day