The Force is very strong withThe Last Jedias the movie has already passedRogue Oneat the global box office. The latest chapter of the Skywalker saga has been in theaters for less than three weeks, but has already managed to overtake the first ever standalone live-actionStar Warsmovie, which was released in theaters last year. This is what the power of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia can do for a movie.
As of January 1,Star Wars: The Last Jedihas pulled in $1,056,389, 228 worldwide. That, compared toRogue One: A Star Wars Story, which managed to bring in $1,056,057,273 during itsentire run, after being released in late 2016. The split between the domestic and international grosses for both movies are virtually identical, percentage wise. So it isn’t as though certain foreign markets have more interest inThe Last Jedicompared toRogue One, leading to the difference in numbers. It’s just that more people are interested in aStar Warsmovie with legacy characters in it. And understandably so.
With that out of the way, by no means wasRogue Onea failure for Disney and Lucasfilm by comparison. The fact that aStar Warsmovie with scarcely any recognizable characters in it, save for a fewDarth Vader scenes, managed to pull in more than $1 billion at the box office is still significant. That says more about what the brand can do in the future and gives Lucasfilm the confidence to take some risks moving forward. It was never expected to be as big as one of the saga movies.
That brings us to the other comparison, which is betweenStar Wars: The Last JediandStar Wars: The Force Awakens. Domestically,The Last Jedihas $530.2 million to its name. At this point in its run,The Force Awakensalready had $750.2. Again, that doesn’t makeStar Wars 8a failure by comparison. WhenThe Force Awakenswas released, it had been a decade since aStar Wars moviehad been released, and arguably a lot longer since a good one had come out, so fans were very eager and it’s impossible to assume those conditions can be replicated again.
The Force Awakens finished its box office runwith $2.06 billion at the box office, making it the third highest-grossing movie ever released.Star Wars: The Last Jediwon’t catch that number, but it’s still going to wind up being the highest-grossing movie released in 2017 globally and has already earned that title on the domestic side of things, overtakingBeauty and the Beastrecently, according toBox Office Mojo. Not bad for a movie that’s had a very divisive response from theStar Warsfanbase.
