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Los Angeles Times

Thanks, Tom Cruise and Stitch! Movie theaters have a record-breaking Memorial Day weekend

It was Saturday afternoon, and I had ditched my two young, loud kids, leaving them with my husband for a solo trip to the movie theater. There was no quiet to be had, though. When I got to the AMC theater at Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, the place was packed. Among the crowd: lots of kids as giddy and rowdy as my own. It was the opening weekend for Walt Disney Co.'s live-action remake of 'Lilo & Stitch.' Families posed for selfies outside the theater with a giant banner featuring the crazed alien Stitch. Inside, a long line for popcorn and candy snaked through the lobby. The premieres of 'Lilo & Stitch' and 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning' powered a record-breaking Memorial Day weekend at the box office. As my colleague Samantha Masunaga reported, 'Lilo & Stitch' hauled in an estimated $183 million in its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada, setting the record for the biggest Memorial Day weekend opener ever. Not adjusting for inflation, it toppled the former top Memorial Day movie, 'Top Gun: Maverick,' which debuted with $160.5 million in 2022. Paramount Pictures and Skydance Media's 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning' brought in $77 million domestically for second place, with 'Final Destination Bloodlines,' 'Thunderbolts*' and 'Sinners' rounding out the top five. The busy holiday was a relief for theater owners and moviemakers still struggling from a post-pandemic slump. The local film and TV industry has been battered in recent years by the slowdown in production wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, which made audiences more comfortable staying home to watch movies on streaming platforms, and the writers' and actors' strikes in 2023. Enter: the little blue alien and Tom Cruise, still performing his own stunts at 62. Chris Aronson, Paramount's president of domestic distribution, called the holiday ticket sales 'just an extraordinary accomplishment after so many people were willing to write off the theatrical business.' Historically, the holiday has been one of the biggest moviegoing weekends, serving as a springboard for the busy summer months. This year, the record-breaking holiday follows a solid spring. Films such as Warner Bros. Pictures' 'A Minecraft Movie' and Ryan Coogler's 'Sinners' helped to fuel domestic theatrical revenue of $875 million in April, close to the pre-pandemic average of $886 million for the same month from 2015 to 2019, Eric Handler, media and entertainment analyst at Roth Capital, told Masunaga. Disney and Marvel Studios' 'Thunderbolts*' and Warner Bros. Pictures' 'Final Destination Bloodlines,' which premiered in May, also have kept up steady business. I didn't go to see the blockbusters, though. I walked into a less-than-half-full screening of 'Friendship,' the ultra-awkward indie comedy starring Tim Robinson as a suburban dad who becomes obsessed with his new neighbor, a weatherman played by Paul Rudd. The trailer boasts a review that, in reference to another Rudd movie, calls it ''I Love You, Man' for sickos.' For an independent film, it had a good holiday weekend, bringing in $4.6 million, according to the film performance tracker Box Office Mojo. Half of my theater's audience sat quietly, and I heard one older man grumble on the way out that it was 'the worst movie I've ever seen.' The other half laughed through the actors' foraging expedition for wild mushrooms and 'adventures' in the local sewer system. I was in the latter half, whatever that says about me. My husband — a Robinson superfan who went by himself to a 'Friendship' screening later that night — met me outside the theater with our kids, who had one question: 'When can we go see 'Lilo & Stitch'?' Valerie says, 'My Happy Place a.k.a.: Santa Barbara.'Lynne says, 'Cayucos! Cool beach town in Central California!' Email us at essentialcalifornia@ and your response might appear in the newsletter this week. Today's great photo is from Times photographer Myung J. Chung at Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood where Scouts joined community members in a huge Memorial Day effort to place flags on nearly 90,000 grave sites. Hailey Branson-Potts, staff reporterKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew Campa, Sunday writerKarim Doumar, head of newsletters How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on