Star Wars: The Last Jedi blasted into theaters this past weekend, and the iconic movie franchise’s latest installment walked off with the second-biggest domestic opening weekend at the box office ever, at $220 million.
The Last Jedi made the jump into hyperspace (financially speaking) in its weekend debut, though the new movie could not quite catch up to its predecessor, as 2015’s The Force Awakens remains the box-office champion for a domestic opening ($247 million). The Last Jedi, which also posted the fifth-largest global opening box office of all-time at $450 million, may not be the biggest Star Wars movie ever, but the second movie in the franchise’s current trilogy is already well on its way to being crowned 2017’s box-office winner. And, that’s all despite a mixed reaction from many Star Wars fans, even as critics mostly liked the new film, which sports a 93% rating on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
The film from Walt Disney and Lucasfilm is only the fourth movie ever to top the $200 million-mark for a domestic opening, and its North American debut is the best of the year, topping Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast adaptation’s March domestic opening by more than $45 million. At the worldwide box office, The Last Jedi actually can not claim the biggest global box-office opening of 2017, as that title belongs to Universal’s The Fate of the Furious, with a whopping $541 million (the biggest ever) in April.
Get Data Sheet, Coins2Day’s technology newsletter.
As the year’s worldwide box office rankings currently stand, Beauty and the Beast ($1.26 billion) just barely edges out TheFate of the Furious ($1.24 billion) in terms of global earnings. The Last Jedi easily topped Beauty and the Beast‘s opening weekend, both domestically and worldwide, and the newest Star Wars movie also got off to a much faster start in North America than The Fate of the Furious ($98 million domestic opening).
It stands to reason that The Last Jedi will be able to jump past both movies to win the 2017 box-office crown, especially when you consider that the film has not even opened yet in one of the world’s biggest movie markets. The Last Jedi will not be released in China until Jan. 5, 2018, a long delay mirroring Disney’s release strategy in China two years ago for The Force Awakens, which went on to pull in $52 million total in that country, according to Box Office Mojo. Unlike with somebig action movie franchises, China is not quite as lucrative of a box office market for Star Wars (blame a more meager following for the original Star Wars trilogy). But, the world’s second-biggest movie market should still bolster The Last Jedi‘s worldwide haul as the movie races toward box-office dominance for the year.