The Last Jedi, the latest instalment in the Star Wars franchise, rocketed to a debut of $220m at the North American box office, according to studio estimates on Sunday. That gives Rian Johnson\u2019s film the second-best opening ever, slotting in behind only its predecessor,\u00a0The Force Awakens.<\/p>\n
The Disney blockbuster became just the fourth film to open above $200m in the US. Aside from The Force Awakens ($248.8m), the others are The Avengers ($207.4m) and Jurassic World ($208.8m).<\/p>\n
The Last Jedi is off to\u00a0a similar start overseas, too, with $230m in international ticket sales, said Disney. That brings its three-day global haul to $450m. The film topped the box-office charts in a number of territories, including the UK, Germany and Japan.<\/p>\n
The opening also gave the Walt Disney Company the opportunity to flex its muscles on the heels of the deal announced last week for it to\u00a0purchase 21st Century Fox\u00a0for $52.4bn. As part of the deal,\u00a0Disney will take control of 20th Century Fox, one of Hollywood\u2019s six major studios.<\/p>\n \u201cThe weekend that we\u2019re in is a byproduct of the foresight and vision from our CEO Bob Iger to bring Lucasfilm into the fold,\u201d said Disney distribution chief Dave Hollis, alluding to\u00a0Disney\u2019s 2012 purchase of Lucasfilm. \u201cSo as we think about the possibility of other things being added, you can\u2019t help but be excited about the possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n Fox, as it happens, was the only studio to open another new wide-release film against The Last Jedi in the US. Its animated comedy,\u00a0Ferdinand, grossed $13.3m. Another family film, Pixar\u2019s\u00a0Coco, took third place, bringing its four-week total to over $150m.<\/p>\n While JJ Abrams\u2019 reboot capitalised on a decade\u2019s hiatus for Star Wars, Johnson\u2019s sequel didn\u2019t have the same benefit of freshness. It follows not only The Force Awakens (which ultimately grossed $2.1bn) but last year\u2019s spinoff,\u00a0Rogue One. That release opened with $155.1m, and grossed in total just more than $1bn globally. Critics gave Johnson\u2019s film a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences endorsed it, too, with an A CinemaScore.<\/p>\n Signalling its faith in Johnson\u2019s course for Star Wars, Lucasfilm earlier announced that\u00a0Johnson will develop the next trilogy\u00a0for the franchise, the first of which he\u2019ll write and direct. Abrams is set to return to direct Episode IX after he was brought in to replace\u00a0Colin Trevorrow. A separate spinoff, centred on\u00a0a young Han Solo, is due out next summer.<\/p>\n The massive debut for The Last Jedi singlehandedly brightens what has been a disappointing year for Hollywood. The weekend was far and away the highest grossing of the year. According to comScore, the industry was down about 3.9% from last year, before this weekend. Now it\u2019s 2.9% off the 2016 pace. Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore, estimates the year will end about 2% down with a little over $11bn in ticket sales.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: Guardian UK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Last Jedi, the latest instalment in the Star Wars franchise, rocketed to a debut of $220m at the North American box office, according to studio estimates on Sunday. That gives Rian Johnson\u2019s film the second-best opening ever, slotting in behind only its predecessor,\u00a0The Force Awakens. The Disney blockbuster became just the fourth film to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":384529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2777,137],"tags":[12046,15538],"class_list":["post-384528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-showbiz","tag-box-office","tag-star-wars-the-last-jedi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=384528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/384529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=384528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=384528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=384528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}