‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Zooms Past $800 Million At The Box Office, Might Make As Much As $1.6 Billion
After less than two weeks in theaters,Star Wars: The Last Jedihas surpassed $800 million at the global box office. As of this writing,BoxOfficeMojoputs the movie’s worldwide grosses at more than $815 million, and some box office analysts are predicting that the latest entry into theStar Warsfranchise could finish its theatrical run with as much as $1.6 billion.
See how the box office numbers forRian Johnson’s sequel compare to those forJ.J. Abrams’The Force Awakensbelow.
Star Wars: The Last Jedihad an impressive debut, as itpulled in $45 million during its opening Thursday night screenings– second only toThe Force Awakens. In its second weekend,The Last Jedisuffered a large percentage drop, leading to a bit of hand-wringing that the film may be losing a bit of steam. Here’s another way of looking at it:The Last Jedihas made $815 million in the same amount of time it tookThe Force Awakensto make $1.2 billion. That’s a pretty huge difference, but it makes sense consideringThe Force Awakenshad a curiosity factor to it thatThe Last Jedican’t replicate. Everyone and their mother was wondering what a newStar Warsmovie would look like when J.J. Abrams started this new trilogy, and now that the foundation has been laid, it stands to reason that the same level of curiosity wouldn’t quite apply to a sequel.
Another reason for the slower start is becauseJumanji: Welcome to the Junglehas served as a larger competitor than many people anticipated (becausethat movie is fun!), and becauseThe Force Awakensdidn’t have as much competition when it was released back in December of 2015. But hardcoreStar Warsfans and regular moviegoers curious to see what all the fuss is about will continue to pour into theaters over the holiday break to seeThe Last Jedi, andanalysts predictthat Johnson’s movie could end its theatrical run with $1.6 billion worldwide. (Abrams' movie finished its run with over $2 billion in total.)
When all is said and done,The Last Jedicould beat outAvatar($760.5 million) andTitanic($659.4) as the second-biggest domestic release of all time behindThe Force Awakens' staggering $936.7 million domestic haul.Forbessuggests the movie could make over a billion worldwide before the year’s end, and as long as it finishes its run with more than $1.3 billion, it’ll bestBeauty and the Beastto become the highest-grossing movie of 2017. That’d be quite the accomplishment for a director whose previous three filmscombinedgrossed only $186 million. Not bad, Rian Johnson. Not bad at all.
