Last year, theater owners and industry professionals wrung their hands as Memorial Day box office performance tanked. This year could not be more different.

It’s a Memorial Day weekend for the box office record books. Movie theaters across the country were jamming as “Lilo & Stitch” and Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” fueled the largest Memorial Day holiday in history — and established several other benchmarks in the process.

Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” is proving that “Snow White” was an aberration, as it has earned an excellent $55 million domestic opening day to bring its global total to $111 million heading into the extended Memorial Day weekend,