Box Office: ‘Lilo & Stitch’ Ignites to $341 Million Globally, ‘Mission: Impossible 8’ Climbs to $200 Million

“Lilo & Stitch” is successfully causing box office mayhem. Disney’s latest live-action remake ignited to $341 million globally, including a mighty $157.8 million from international markets.

It’s the second-largest opening weekend of the year behind the Warner Bros. video game adaptation “A Minecraft Movie” ($313 million over three days). Ticket sales for “Lilo” also rank as the third-best start for Disney’s live-action reboots following 2019’s “The Lion King” and 2017’s “Beauty and the Beast,” which each ended up grossing over $1 billion.

With great word-of-mouth and generation-spanning appeal, “Lilo & Stitch” could reach similar box office heights. Dean Fleischer Camp directed the reboot about a chaotic alien who crash-lands in Hawaii and gets adapted by a young girl and her older sister. Top earning territories are Mexico with $23.7 million to start, the United Kingdom with $12.9 million and Brazil with $11.1 million.

This weekend’s other newcomer, Paramount and Skydance’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” also started strong with $190 million worldwide, with $127 million of the haul from 64 overseas territories. Paramount began rolling out the Tom Cruise-led tentpole internationally a week ago and folded those grosses into this initial number. With those preview screenings included, the biggest markets were Korea ($12.7 million), Japan ($11 million), the U.K. ($10.7 million) and India ($9 million). The film opens in China on May 30.

In North America, “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” earned a series-best $63 million over the weekend and an estimated $77 million through Monday’s Memorial Day holiday. The four-day weekend will propel the film’s ticket sales above $200 million globally. It’s a mighty start for the action epic, which is one of the most expensive films of all time with a $400 million production budget. So, the eighth installment in the long-running spy series needs to become a box office juggernaut to turn a theatrical profit. Franchise veteran Christopher McQuarrie directed the film, which picks up as the teflon MI6 agent Ethan Hunt continues his race against time to find a rogue artificial intelligence known as the Entity.