An adorable blue extraterrestrial creature and a teflon spy operative are expected to ignite the box office over Memorial Day weekend.

Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” is projected to lead with a massive $150 million to $160 million from 4,410 North American theaters over the four-day holiday stretch. Independent tracking services believe the final tally could be even higher based on advance ticket sales. (Disney’s “Moana 2” was tracking a similar start to “Lilo” before obliterating expectations with $225 million over the five-day Thanksgiving frame.) Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” the eighth installment in Tom Cruise’s action series, should also start strong with $75 million to $85 million from 3,800 venues for the four days.

Thanks to effective counterprogramming, this weekend — assisted by holdovers like “Final Destination Bloodlines” and “Sinners” — could fuel the largest Memorial Day on record at the domestic box office. The benchmark to beat is 2013 with $306 million across all films, led by “Fast & Furious 6,” “The Hangover Part III” and “Star Trek Into Darkness.” Whether these blockbusters set a new high-water mark, this Memorial Day will be far better than the same weekend in 2024 when “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and “Garfield” fielded the holiday’s worst showing in three decades.

“Lilo & Stitch” looks to collect another $125 million at the international box office, which would bring the initial global tally to a mighty $275 million to $285 million. Disney spent $100 million to produce and roughly $100 million on worldwide marketing efforts. In North America, “Lilo & Stitch” should rank as one of the top debuts for Disney’s live-action remakes, in the company of 2019’s “The Lion King” ($191 million) and 2017’s “Beauty and the Beast” ($174 million). Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp, “Lilo & Stitch” follows an alien who causes chaos after crash-landing in Hawaii and gets adopted by a young girl and her older sister. The film topples into theaters more than two decades after the original 2002 animated feature, which has become a family favorite over the years.

Meanwhile, “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” is hoping to establish a new opening weekend record for the 29-year-old franchise — a distinction that belongs to 2018’s “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” with $61 million. Overseas, “The Final Reckoning” should bring in $125 million to $130 million for a worldwide start above $200 million.

Like Cruise’s globe-trotting agent Ethan Hunt, “The Final Reckoning” faces a high-stakes mission. The film cost a staggering $400 million, a figure that skyrocketed as Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie worked against the pandemic, two strikes and and pesky inflation increases, making this one of the most expensive movies of all time. So the tentpole needs to become the highest-grossing of the series — that’s currently “Fallout” with $791 million worldwide — to justify its massive price tag.

This film’s predecessor, 2023’s “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” fell short of box office expectations after getting crushed in the wake of “Barbenheimer.” That movie tapped out with $570 million worldwide against a $300 million budget, leading the studio to rename the follow-up action adventure. “The Final Reckoning” features more death-defying stunts from the 62-year-old Cruise as Ethan Hunt continues his race against time to find a rogue artificial intelligence known as the Entity.