By Auzinea Bacon, CNN

(CNN) — After a slow start to 2025, the Hollywood box office has pulled off a “Stitchpossible” comeback buoyed by a huge holiday weekend.

Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” and the eighth installment of “Mission: Impossible” helped spark a record $325 million estimated box office haul for Memorial Day weekend.

“Lilo & Stitch” grossed roughly $145.5 million domestically Friday through Sunday and is expected to earn another $37.5 million by late Monday after expectations of at least $160 million for the three-day weekend. It is expected to be the highest-grossing opening for the holiday weekend, likely edging the 2022 release of Paramount’s “Top Gun Maverick” ($160 million), according to Comscore data.

“Lilo & Stitch,” a live-action remake of the 2002 animated film, surged ahead of Paramount and Skydance’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” which grossed about $63 million in domestic sales through Sunday, surpassing projections of about $60 million for the three-day weekend. The latest Tom Cruise blockbuster is expected to earn about $77 million through the holiday and is the best three-day opening for the franchise, topping 2018’s “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” which earned $61 million.

“That perfect combination of ‘Lilo and Stitch’ and ‘Mission: Impossible’ put a spotlight on Memorial Day weekend,” Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, told CNN on Sunday. “We were singing a very sad song a year ago.”

The strong Memorial Day weekend box office is an encouraging sign for the industry, which had grossed a tepid $132 million for the weekend last year.

Many Americans have returned to movie theaters since April with the releases of “A Minecraft Movie” and “Sinners,” which have combined to gross $677.4 million. Both movies are distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. Warner Bros. Discovery is the parent company of CNN.

“You really couldn’t formulate or write a better script for the movie industry to see this kind of a turnaround on what’s usually been a pretty important bellwether for the summer box office,” said Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango and founder and owner of Box Office Theory.

“Lilo & Stitch” is also the third highest-grossing opening weekend for Disney’s live actions, which have not always met expectations. In late March, the release of “Snow White” fell well short of industry projections, due in part to some well-publicized controversies. But “Lilo & Stitch” is more in line with the 2017 release of “Beauty and the Beast,” which opened to $174.75 million, said Daniel Loria, editorial director at Box Office Pro.

Loria added that this “Lilo & Stitch” installment will make more than the roughly $145 million that the original managed domestically over its entire theatrical run.

“When there’s a property like (‘Lilo & Stitch’) that’s been able to define an audience for two decades after its theatrical release, and hit that same audience that grew up with the movie with a chance to take their own family, their own kids to go see it … we see great returns on that,” said Loria.

Dergarabedian said the summer movie box office could exceed $4 billion, which would be in line with 2023.

The ‘Barbenheimer’ effect

Box office analysts and social media have used the term “Stitchpossible” and other variations to conjure the smashing success of 2023 blockbusters “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” which was dubbed “Barbenheimer.”

But Americans aren’t necessarily heading to theaters to take part in a cultural phenomenon.

Loria described the success of “Barbenheimer” as “organic” and “a viral phenomenon” that doesn’t necessarily need to be replicated every time two major movies open on the same weekend.

“It didn’t used to be weird when you had two big movies come out on the same weekend. That wasn’t an anomaly,” he said.

Robbins doesn’t think there will ever be another “Barbenheimer.” But he called efforts by moviegoers to create such names for double-movie releases “a great part of the narrative.”

Michael O’Leary, the president and CEO of Cinema United, said he’s less concerned about the catchy title created when two major movies open on the same day and more excited about how moviegoers respond.

“They know that there’s something special going on in the movie theater, and they want to be a part of it,” O’Leary said.

He added that watching a film in theaters is “a shared experience that you can’t replicate anywhere else.”

“To be looking at the movie theater as the most relevant entertainment option this weekend is huge,” said Dergarabedian.

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