We won’t know until the official figures are released tomorrow whether Jurassic World has topped the weekend box office for an impressive fourth weekend in a row, or if Pixar’s Inside Out has squeaked out its first victory in three weekends of release.  While two high profile new releases did come in below expectations, neither Terminator Genisys nor Magic Mike XXL “bombed,” and the overall box office was up 3% from the Fourth of July weekend last year when Transformers: Age of Extinction topped the charts for a second frame with $37 million.

Preliminary figures put Jurassic World in the lead with an estimated $30.9 million, just a 43.3% drop and the third best “fourth weekend” ever.  Jurassic World has now earned $558 million domestically and $826.9 overseas for a worldwide total of $1.385 billion, making it the fifth highest-grossing film ever (totals not adjusted for inflation) and displacing Avengers: Age of Ultron on the worldwide list.   Though competition will pick up over the next few weeks, Jurassic World has a shot at surpassing The Avengers $623 million domestic total, and moving up to #3 on the all-time domestic chart.

Meanwhile Pixar’s Inside Out continues to impress.  The animated feature, which has been widely praised in the press for the way in which it analyzes the conflicting emotions of its 12-year-old female protagonist, continues to perform better than any previous Pixar release except for Toy Story 3.  If Inside Out does not succeed in the rare feat of winning the box office for the first time on its third weekend of release, it will become the highest-grossing film ever that never reached #1 on the weekend charts. In any case there is no dobut that Inside Out was the clear winner for the full 5-day Fourth of July period with $45.3 million to Jurassic World's $43.8 million. Right now it looks like Inside Out could end up with a domestic total greater than Finding Nemo’s $339 million, though Inside Out will face stiff competition for the family audience in July with the release of Universal’s Minions and Columbia’s Pixels.

Terminator Genisys opened well below expectations, taking in just $28.7 million for the 3-day weekend and $44.1 million for the 5-day Wednesday to Sunday period.  Paramount clearly did not expect that Jurassic World would be such a “leggy” hit that it would dampen the debut of the fifth Terminator film, but poor reviews (only 27% positive on Rotten Tomatoes) and an inept marketing campaign that gave away the movie’s controversial narrative twist in the second trailer, also clearly hurt the Terminator Genisys’ prospects.  Paramount, which has already announced release dates for two sequels to the $155 million Terminator franchise reboot, had better hope that overseas audiences will rescue Genisys, which now looks like it will have a hard time topping $100 million here in the States.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): July  3-5, 2015
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	Jurassic World	$30,900,000	3,737	$8,269	$558,137,000	4
2	Inside Out	$30,105,000	4,158	$7,240	$246,160,000	3
3	Terminator: Genisys	$28,700,000	3,758	$7,637	$44,156,000	1
4	Magic Mike XXL	$11,600,000	3,355	$3,458	$26,656,000	1
5	Ted 2	$11,000,000	3,448	$3,190	$58,334,000	2
6	Max	$6,610,000	2,870	$2,303	$25,349,000	2
7	Spy	$5,500,000	2,387	$2,304	$97,896,000	5
8	San Andreas	$3,030,000	1,672	$1,812	$147,373,000	6
9	Me and Earl and the Dying Girl	$1,320,000	870	$1,517	$4,004,000	4
10	Dope	$1,098,000	863	$1,272	$14,104,000	3

Terminator Genisys received a “just OK” B+ CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences, which were 62% male and a bit on the older side (65% over 25).  Opening in about 60% of the overseas territories Genisys earned $74 million, so there is hope on the international front, especially since the film has yet to open in China, Japan, Italy, and Germany.

The problem that Genisys faces is that traditionally Fourth of July releases tend to be frontloaded.  An extreme example of that was that bit of beefcake counterprogramming known as Magic Mike XXL, which debuted to $9.3 million on Wednesday, but could only manage to earn about $2.4 million on Saturday, as it made just $11.6 million over the entire 3-day holiday weekend.  But there is no real problem here for Warner Bros., since Magic Mike XXL cost just $14 million to produce and has already earned $26.7 million, which means it is already fairly close to breaking even.

The audience for Magic Mike XXL was a record 96% female.  Unlike the first Magic Mike film, which dealt with economic issues in its unvarnished look at the lives of male strippers and earned a surprising $113 million, Magic Mike XXL is a pure entertainment “romp,” with lower artistic aspirations, and, it appears, a much lower box office total.

In fifth place, right behind Magic Mike XXL, was another disappointing sequel to a highly original, out-of-the-ordinary movie, Seth Macfarlane’s Ted 2, which fell 67.2% from its disappointing opening as it earned $11 million and brought its domestic total to $58.3 million.

The family-targeting dog with PTSD movie Max dropped just 45.6% from its modest opening, while two long-in-the-tooth modest hits, Paul Feig’s R-rated espionage comedy Spy and the disaster film San Andreas posted even lower percentage drops.  Spy should make it over the $100 million mark by this time next week, and San Andreas will be over $150 million by the same point.

The Sundance favorite Me and Early and the Dying Girl added 516 theaters with only modest results as it earned $1.3 million, while another indie favorite, the coming-of-age film Dope lost 988 theaters and won’t likely add much more to its $14 million total, though look for this film to do very well in today’s wide variety of post-theatrical delivery channels.

Be sure to check back here next week to check on the fate of Minions, which most experts think will end up as the highest grossing animated release of the year, debuts along with the Ryan Reynold’s thriller Self/Less, and the horror movie The Gallows.