Into The Wild: The Highest Grossing Jurassic Park Movies, Ranked
With only five films released, the Jurassic Park franchise is one of the highest-grossing with an impressive $4.99 billion.
Almost two decades after Steven Spielberg gave rise to the summer blockbuster phenomenon with Jaws. He changed the game again with his archetypal tale of mankind's arrogance in the face of nature and creation. The original Jurassic Park movie became the highest-grossing film ever upon its release in 1993 and continues to break records in the present times, topping the box office almost three decades later thanks to theaters showing classic movies in place of new releases due to the pandemic.
Spielberg's original movie was so beloved and legendary that it has since given rise to a couple of sequels, besides the Jurassic World trilogy launched in 2015. The latter thrived better at the box office than the original trilogy. Here are all the five movies of the franchise ranked according to their box office collection:
The Underperformer Jurassic Park III
Jurassic Park III, directed by Captain America: The First Avenger director Joe Johnston, has some notable redeeming qualities even though it remains the lowest-grossing Jurassic film. The movie featured the Spinosaurus as a menacing alternative instead of the T-Rex though the movie ending was not to everyone’s taste and received mixed reviews. The film had a successful opening weekend, earning $50.3 million, and it earned $368.8 million worldwide, according to Statista, and $181.2 million in the United States. It turned out to be the eighth highest-earning film of the year worldwide but is the lowest-grossing movie in the franchise.
Keeping The Legacy Alive With The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Released in 1997, the actual second film in the Jurassic Park series does seem to have a decent following. Banking on that old Goldblum charm, The Lost World: Jurassic Park brought him and Richard Attenborough back in an extended capacity to keep the Jurassic legacy rolling. The first sequel in the series is easily a darker affair. The King Kong-reminiscent story of a Tyrannosaurus trying to find its baby in the San Diego streets was pretty exciting for the audience.
The Lost World took in $72.1 million on its opening weekend, which was the biggest opening weekend until then. The movie held this record for four and a half years until Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in November 2001. It also became the fastest film to pass the $100 million mark within six days. Despite these records, its total box office gross was lower than the total of the original movie. It grossed $229.1 million in the U.S. and $389.5 million worldwide, scouring a total of $618.6 million worldwide, becoming the second-highest-earning film of 1997 after Titanic.
Jurassic Park And The Spielberg Magic
With the original Jurassic Park movie, Steven Spielberg, David Koepp, and Michael Crichton set up a foundation for blockbusters so awe-inspiring that it did capture the entire world’s imagination. The first film of the franchise, Jurassic Park, scored $1,032 billion, as Box Office Mojo reports. This was the first film that bagged $1 billion at the global box office back in 1993.
One of the best examples of the Spielberg magic is Jurassic Park that showed humans clearly out of their element, fused with Michael Crichton’s science-oriented layout in 1990. There’s a reason people are hyped for the reunion of Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, and Sam Neil for the upcoming sequel, as the trio that helped to persuade the world that dinosaurs could roam the Earth once again will forever be an indispensable part of this benchmark franchise.
The Box Office Smasher Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom pitted Owen Grady, and Claire Dearing played by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, against each other, resulting in the most Crichton-esque mischief ever. It gave the fifth movie an exciting arc. It blended the Frankenstein complex of a hybrid dinosaur, the Hitchcock mystery, and a thrilling climax. This blockbuster fleshed out the basic skeleton of The Lost World: Jurassic Park into an exciting rollercoaster ride and blew open the door for future films to run completely insane, as Screen Rant reports.
The movie swept $417.7 million in the United States and Canada box offices, and $892.7 million in other places, for a net worldwide gross of $1.310 billion, against a production budget of $170 million.
The Revival With Jurassic World
After being dormant for two decades, the first spin-off to bring Jurassic Park back from its hibernation is still the best of the sequel bunch, as it recreates the marvel and awe that made everyone flock to the screens with some new ploys.
It was the biggest blockbuster of the year for a brief period, introducing the world to hybrid dinosaurs with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard as the updated franchise’s front runners. Against a production budget of $150 million, Jurassic World demolished the box office with a worldwide total of $1.670 billion with $652.3 million in the United States and Canada and $1.018 billion in other countries. It became the first movie to gross over $500 million in a single weekend. As Forbes reports, despite the several rival franchises, the Jurassic Park saga has always been delightful and adrenaline-pumping without a dull moment in the movies.
The second trilogy will culminate with the upcoming Jurassic World: Dominion. Despite the diversified response to the first two Jurassic World movies, expectations are high for Dominion thanks to the return of the legendary Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum from the original trendsetter movie. The film is anticipated to blast the box office and affix Jurassic World as the biggest of the Jurassic trilogies, commercially speaking.
Source: Statista, Forbes, Screen Rant, Box Office Mojo / www.therichest.com/