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‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Has The 2nd Biggest Box Office Opening Of All Time

The Force is with Rian Johnson, Lucasfilm and “Star Wars.” As you probably expected if you’ve even remotely followed a “Star Wars” related box office story, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” crushed at the box office this weekend with monster numbers (and it’s Johnson’s birthday today to boo). Exceeding expectations and early predictions, the Rian Johnson-written and directed “Star Wars” film soared to a whopping $220 million domestically, the second highest opening weekend ever domestically behind “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which debuted to $247 million in 2015. ‘The Last Jedi’ will likely continue to smash more records, and its $104.78 million Friday haul also marked the second highest of its kind. ‘The Last Jedi’ was expected to be frontloaded and drop off hard on Saturday, but boasted a fantastic $63.6M; the fourth highest Saturday gross after “Jurassic World,” “Avengers” and of course, ‘The Force Awakens.’ Worldwide, ‘The Last Jedi’ opened to an interstellar $450 million; that’s approximately the 5th highest global opening ever after “Furious 7,” ‘The Force Awakens,’ “Jurassic World” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2” (not always an 1:1 comparison because some titles don’t open up on all the same territories at once, but that’s how this cookie crumbles). Don’t forget that China is still to come as ‘Jedi’ doesn’t open there until January 5.

READ MORE: ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’: Rian Johnson’s Daring & Dazzling Deconstruction Of Destiny [Review]

If you’re paying attention to Twitter (and maybe you shouldn’t for your sanity’s sake), there’s a bit of a divide between critics and hardcore fans, some of the latter feeling dissatisfied from the film. But that’s certainly not reflected anywhere in its box office performance; ‘The Last Jedi’ was greeted with a glowing A Cinemascore grade from audiences which will mean a lot of repeat viewings and a strong hold in the following weeks.

READ MORE: ‘Star Wars’: Rian Johnson Says There Will Be “Extensive” Deleted Scenes On ‘The Last Jedi’ DVD

It’s hard to compare ‘The Last Jedi’ to ‘The Force Awakens,’ the first “Star Wars” movie with the original cast in three decades—anticipation that can never be matched— or even “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” a new “Star Wars” film with characters that didn’t have the benefit of being bolstered by Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia or Chewbacca, but ‘Rogue One’ opened to $155M in 2016 and went on to make $1.056 billion. That alone should tell you, a billion is a forgone conclusion for ‘The Last Jedi.’ The question will be of course, just how high it can go. Catching the ‘Force Awakens’ is unrealistic. J.J Abrams’ film earned $2.068 billion—the third highest grossing film of all time worldwide after “Avatar” and “Titanic.” And so the question will be: can it surpass “Jurassic World” ($1.6 billion), “The Avengers” ($1.518 billion) or “Furious 7” ($1.516 billion), the 4th, 5th and 6th highest grossing films of all time globally.

As you might have guessed, a huge boon for ‘The Last Jedi,’ meant a huge drop for everyone else at the box office, but especially big blockbuster tentpoles like “Justice League” and “Thor: Ragnarok.” The Marvel movie is in a better position having already cracked the $300 million mark domestically (and probably inching to around $875 million worldwide). However, “Justice League” has greatly stalled domestically, fell another 57%, and in this 5th week is only at $219.4 million. There’s very little staying power left in the superhero team-up that was supposed to be the equivalent of Marvel’s “The Avengers” and the picture will probably tap out around $235M at home. To drive the point home, “Justice League” dropped 800 theaters in North America. It’s toast.

That means there’s no way the blockbuster will catch up to the $291M haul of “Man Of Steel” in 2013 and thus “Justice League” will unquestionably face the ignominious distinction of being the lowest grossing film in the entire DC Extended Universe. “Justice League” has hit $633 million worldwide, but has already exhausted its oh-so-important opening thrust and only made a meager $5.3 million this weekend internationally from 65 territories. That means, even limping to $675 million is not a certainty and (maybe, maybe) it will just surpass “Man Of Steel” globally. And if does, that’s still a rather huge, embarrassing black eye to face for the entire franchise as the 2nd lowest grossing DCEU film in the series on the planet. It should be noted that despite an amazing start and an amazing reception from fans and critics, ‘Ragnarok’ will only end up around being the 9th highest grossing Marvel movie of all time at home and the lowest grossing Marvel movie of 2017 behind “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and “Guardians Of The Galaxy.” That’s not entirely surprising given Thor is still a third tier character, and its domestic box office haul is still very, very good, but it goes to show sometimes a film doesn’t quite have the stickiness of its opening box office weekends.

No one really bothered to release a film opposite ‘The Last Jedi’ this weekend, so newcomers were sparse aside from “Ferdinand.” Fox‘s animated adaptation of the children’s book took in a paltry $13.3 million. That’s extremely low when you consider it’s a 4 quadrant, wide release movie on 3,621 screens and family friendly to boot. Bu, perhaps this is the reality of going up against a “Star Wars” movie and the movie can still recover over the holidays though Pixar‘s “Coco” might be stealing its thunder (btw, “Coco” has grossed an astounding $448M worldwide so far). The only other new faces were indie release: “The Ballad of Lefty Brown” and “Birdboy: The Forgotten Children” and neither of their per screen averages are much of anything to speak of.

There’s definitely some movies doing slow, quiet box office business though. “Wonder” with Julia Roberts and Jacob Tremblay has somehow hit $109 million with what felt like no buzz upon release. Mel Gibson’s reputation didn’t hurt “Daddys Home” ($96 million and counting) and mediocre reviews couldn’t ding “Murder On The Orient Express” which is also headed towards the coveted $100M mark.

A24‘s “Ladybird,” a strong Oscar contender, is having a terrific box office showing. Having grossed $25 million in seven weeks (some of that limited release), the movie will soon overtake Best Picture winner “Moonlight” to become the studio’s highest grossing film ever domestically ($65 million is the magic number it would need to beat the Barry Jenkins film worldwide which is very unlikely).

Also doing solid business on the indie circuit is Fox Searchlight‘s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” After a nice, slow build (still only on 944 screens), the Frances McDormand-starring movie has hit $21.3 million. Searchlight’s “The Shape of Water” ramp up is going a little slower: $3.6 million after three weeks, but then again, it’s only on 158 screens so far. Other mid-level films of note taking in a decent amount of cash include “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” ($11.7M) and “The Florida Project,” ($5.1M). Pictures like “Call Me by Your Name” ($2M), and “Darkest Hour” ($2.3M) are still building and currently on less than 100 screens.

1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi— $220,047,000
2. Ferdinand — $13,325,000
3. Coco — $10,025,000 ($150,810,896)
4. Wonder — $5,400,000 ($109,256,738)
5. Justice League — $4,170,000 ($219,456,347)
6. Daddy’s Home 2 — $3,800,000 ($96,579,982)
7. Thor: Ragnarok — $2,981,000 ($306,375,120)
8. The Disaster Artist — $2,636,908 ($12,932,039)
9. Murder on the Orient Express — $2,470,000 ($97,252,742)
10. Lady Bird — $2,108,117 ($25,977,506)

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