Expectations for the sequel were thus tempered, and studios estimated it would come in with around $130 in its opening weekend, considerably less than the original Jurassic World.
Yet, despite the huge success of the original, box-office pundits felt that the sequel would never live up to the original at the box office, even though sequels in the cinematic-universe era regularly score better numbers than their predecessors. Bayona reflects an upgrade at director over Colin Trevorrow. The public perceptions of its two stars - Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard - have not shifted much in the intervening years, and if anything, J. Jurassic World was extremely well received - Cinemascore moviegoers gave it an A and critics gave it a solid 71 percent from Rotten Tomatoes - and went on to score a whopping $1.6 billion worldwide, including $652 million in the United States (it remains the sixth biggest film of all time). Nobody expected numbers those big for the reboot of a franchise that had gone stale with Jurassic Park III back in 2001. Three years ago, the original Jurassic World wildly beat opening-weekend expectations and debuted with a whopping $208 million, which - at the time - was the biggest opening weekend in box-office history (until Star Wars: The Force Awakens came along later that same year).
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom presents an interesting story from a box-office perspective.