Jurassic World Topples Avengers to Become Box-Office King. What Does it Mean?

This article contains mild spoilers for Jurassic World. If you’re one of the two people who didn’t see the movie this past weekend and you want to go in completely spoiler free, read no further.

After 65 million years, the dinosaurs ruled the Earth once again, with Jurassic World taking in a massive $208.8 million in its opening weekend in North America.That is the biggest NA opening weekend ever, narrowly overtaking The Avengers, who racked up just over $207 million.

Even more incredible is Jurassic World‘s global box office total of $524 million.

It represents the first time a film has made more than $500 million worldwide in one weekend. To put the total in perspective, it makes Jurassic World the 134th highest grossing movie…ever. It beat the previous single weekend worldwide record Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 by almost $40 million!

It’s a total that most studios would love for an entire theatrical run , never mind just a single weekend.

There’s been lots of ink spilled on the potential causes of Jurassic World’s success, so let’s skip over them and go straight to what its success probably means.

Indiana Jones

The Next Indiana Jones?

Chris Pratt is a movie star.

Jurassic World clearly owes some of its success to his presence and Pratt is subsequently a fixture on the A-List and will be for the foreseeable future.

This massive weekend will no doubt heighten the rumours that have been circulating for some time about Steven Spielberg eyeing Pratt for the lead in an Indiana Jones reboot film.

The success of Jurassic World all but guarantees that if the Indy reboot happens, Pratt will be involved. Conveniently, Disney studios already has an ongoing relationship with Pratt following Guardians of the Galaxy, and since Disney now owns Indiana Jones through its purchase of Lucasfilm, it could help make this a reality.

Pratt’s career shows he’s able to pick solid projects, so depending on Spielberg’s involvement and the quality of the script (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull means quality is no guarantee) there’s a good chance Pratt will be there.

The only question is whether he’ll get his own hat or whether he’ll have to use the old one.

Jurassic World Sequels?

Jurassic World will have a sequel. Heck, it’ll probably have more than just one and thankfully, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Chris Pratt reveals that he’ll be involved. He says the producers of Jurassic World have him for “38 movies or something,” so dinosaurs with frickin’ laser beams on their heads isn’t out of the question…probably.

Seriously though, the only question is what will the first sequel be about?

Clearly, following the events of Jurassic-World, no sane person would ever visit a Jurassic World-type attraction ever again. So the filmmakers are unlikely to revisit the park. They need to expand their world…which makes the film’s setup so clever.

In the film’s title, they’re not only telling you the name of their current attraction Jurassic World, but they’re also reminding viewers that it was dinosaurs who once ruled the earth…which means the next films will probably take the dinosaurs off the island and into the wider world they haven’t called home for 65 million years.

After all, one of the major subplots of the film was Dr. Wu and his potential weaponization of dinosaurs. He managed to escape the island with stolen embryos. Could this theft represent a symbolic escape of dinosaurs off the island and give some clue into the direction of the sequel?

We won’t know what the sequel will be about for a while but if it’s even half as good as Jurassic World, moviegoers are in for a fun night.

There’s really only one bad thing I’ll say about Jurassic World.

It was hard to resist the urge to come up with a title for this article that didn’t suggest Jurassic World chomped, munched, or devoured the box office.

It was a damn good movie, though.