Movies - TV
Jurassic World Dominion Bizarrely Helped A Box Office Bomb Make A Little More Money
RYAN SCOTT
On its opening weekend, "Jurassic World Dominion" earned $145 million and became the number one movie in the U.S. It not only knocked "Top Gun: Maverick" down to second place, but it also surprisingly helped box office bomb "Firestarter" gain nearly $833,340 in earnings from 150 venues in its fifth weekend.
The “Firestarter” remake was released on May 13th and was nearly forgotten for the whole month it was out, as it opened to bad reviews and was streaming on Peacock the same day it was released to theaters. However, before writing it off as a loss, Universal sold the movie as a two-for-one double feature with “Jurassic World Dominion” on ticketing sites such as Fandango.
The biggest surprise of this strategy was that “Firestarter’s” 732.8% earnings boost came mostly from drive-in theaters and not larger theater chains who would not have agreed to sell a double feature. Drives-ins saw a rise in popularity during the pandemic, as people needed something to do while social distancing, and Universal creatively used this to increase the movie’s total earnings to $14 million.