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.

The live-action remake of “Lilo & Stitch” and the adrenaline-fueled “Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning” racked up a combined $494.2 million in worldwide ticket sales, including $208.5 million in the U.