Impossible 8 Team Up To Set Multiple Box Office Records

The combined might of Lilo & Stitch and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is setting records over Memorial Day weekend. The former is a live-action remake of the 2002 Disney animated movie of the same name, following latchkey kid Lilo (Maia Kealoha) befriending the mischievous alien Stitch (Chris Sanders) after he escapes captivity and crash lands in Hawai’i. The latter is the eighth installment in the Mission: Impossible movie franchise, directly following the ending of 2023’s Dead Reckoning as Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team continue to work to stop the rogue AI The Entity from destroying the world.

Per Deadline, as of Saturday morning, Lilo & Stitch is projected to earn a 4-day holiday weekend debut between $175 and $180 million at the domestic box office, while Mission: Impossible is aiming for $77 million. Even if it hits the lower end of its projections, Lilo & Stitch will smash the record for the best Memorial Day debut. It has surpassed the $160.5 million 4-day total earned by Top Gun: Maverick (another Tom Cruise-led picture) in 2022. That film went on to gross $1.496 billion worldwide.

By the end of Monday, Lilo & Stitch will have already outgrossed the entire domestic run of the original movie, which earned $145.8 million in North America. Meanwhile, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning has earned the best opening day of the eight-film series with $24.8 million and is on track to break the record for the best 3-day opening of the franchise, surpassing Mission: Impossible – Fallout‘s $61 million debut by hitting an estimated $63 million.

Their combined might, along with the other titles currently running in theaters, including Final Destination Bloodlines, Thunderbolts*, and Sinners, sees the entire domestic box office for the weekend projected to earn more than $322 million, which makes it the best Memorial Day weekend in history, surpassing the $314.3 million that movies such as Fast & Furious 6, The Hangover Part III, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Iron Man 3 cumulatively earned in 2013.

What This Means For Lilo & Stitch

It Could Become A Billion-Dollar Smash Hit

The Lilo & Stitch release seems well on its way toward surpassing $1 billion. In fact, if it maintains its current lead ahead of Top Gun: Maverick, it could potentially reach a whopping worldwide total of $1.631 billion or more. However, it could potentially earn even more, as international markets can sometimes favor nostalgia plays for more recent properties because titles from the 1980s and earlier did not always receive robust worldwide distribution. This is borne out by the fact that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the highest-grossing domestic movie of all time but only the fifth highest-grossing worldwide.

However, the movie doesn’t even need to surpass $1 billion in order to become a smash hit. The reported budget of Lilo & Stitch is $100 million, which means that its estimated break-even point is most likely somewhere around $250 million. Its projections show that it will approach that total at the domestic box office alone by the end of Memorial Day weekend. While international numbers for its debut have yet to be calculated, it will almost certainly have broken even worldwide by the end of its first full week in theaters, if not earlier.

Our Take On The Weekend Box Office

This Could Kick Off A Great Summer Movie Season

This record-breaking Memorial Day weekend is an incredible sign for the summer to come. As the runs of Lilo & Stitch and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning continue to blaze their way through theaters, every subsequent weekend through the end of July sees at least one more potential blockbuster hit joining their ranks, including Superman, the live-action How to Train Your Dragon, Karate Kid: Legends, F1, Jurassic World Rebirth, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Ballerina, and 28 Years Later. If these titles build on the success of Memorial Day, this summer could potentially continue to break major box office records.

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Source: Deadline

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  Lilo & Stitch

  
  

  7/10

  Release Date

  May 21, 2025
  

  Runtime

  108 Minutes

  Director

  Dean Fleischer Camp

  Writers

  Chris Kekaniokalani Bright, Mike Van Waes, Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois

  Producers

  Tom C. Peitzman, Dan Lin, Ryan Halprin

  
  

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    Chris Sanders

    Stitch (voice)