Dinosaur thriller Jurassic World followed up its record-setting opening with another strong weekend at the box office, leaving the film on the precipice of setting a record for cutting the quickest path to $1 billion in ticket sales.
Distributed by Comcast’s (CMCSA) Universal, Jurassic World last week roared to more than $500 million in global box office gross in its first few days of release — the most ever for a film’s opening weekend. The film’s domestic gross fell off by more than 50% this past weekend, but that was less than was expected and not enough to knock the thriller from atop the weekend’s box-office rankings.
As it stands, Jurassic World finished its second weekend with $981 million in global box-office gross in less than two weeks in theaters, according to Box Office Mojo. At that pace, the film will cross the $1 billion threshold on Thursday, after 13 days in theaters, according to Variety. That would break the record for the fastest film to reach $1 billion in ticket sales, surpassing Furious 7‘s previous record of 17 days, set earlier this year.
Whenever it does cross top $1 billion in global ticket sales, Jurassic World would be the 22nd film to ever do so (joining 1993’s Jurassic Park, among others). Jurassic World now has $398 million in domestic ticket sales, but the majority of the film’s box-office gross has come from overseas markets, including $167 million in China.
The massive success of films like Jurassic World and Furious 7 have helped set up a Hollywood rebound after the movie industry suffered a down year in 2014, when total gross dipped more than 5% (thanks, in part, to a poor summer blockbuster season).
Compared to last year at this time, Hollywood’s total box-office haul is up by more than 6%. And there are more big blockbusters coming down the road that should continue to make money for the industry, including Minions (opening next month) and the highly-anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which opens in December.
