Jurassic World has become the fastest film to reach the magic $1bn mark at the global box office, achieving the feat in just 14 days.
While Box Office Mojo reported a return of $987.2m for the film as of 21 June, a number of respected Hollywood sites report that it has since crossed the mark. Colin Trevorrow’s science-fiction disaster movie, which stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard as employees of a dinosaur theme park trying to cope with the escape of a giant, genetically modified carnivore known as Indominus Rex, is the third film to make $1bn in 2015 so far, after Fast & Furious 7 and Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Fast & Furious 7 held the previous record for the fastest climb to $1bn, achieving the goal in April at the end of its third weekend on release. The street-racing sequel eventually made it to $1.51bn, but Jurassic World is still only two weekends into its release, and is expected to go much further. At its present pace, it should overtake Furious 7 within two weeks to become the fourth-highest-grossing movie of all time, and some observers believe the film could challenge Titanic ($2.186bn) and Avatar ($2.788bn) for the top two spots.
Such an achievement would most likely require Jurassic World to become the kind of moviegoing phenomenon that breeds repeat viewings and at least one rerelease. It is benefiting from positive word-of-mouth, but has not received rapturous reviews, so whether or not it has that kind of staying power remains to be seen.
Jurassic World also smashed two other box office records this weekend: fastest movie to $400m in North America (beating the first Avengers film, from 2012) and biggest North American second-week gross of all time ($106.6m, also ahead of 2012’s Avengers). Jurassic World’s unexpected success means Hollywood looks set for a record 2015: the overall global box office take now stands at $5.214bn, up 6.2% on 2014 figures for the same period.
