Battle at the Box Office 12/18
It was a foregone conclusion that The Last Jedi would dominate the box office, the only question was how big it would be. The answer: astronomical.
With the second largest opening in film history, The Last Jedi made $220 million over the weekend, with a whopping $104 million on Friday alone. The Force Awakens is still the highest opening weekend of all time with $247 million and basically holds first place on all the records The Last Jedi got second place on this past weekend like largest single day, largest Friday and fastest to $100 million. Internationally, The Last Jedi made over $230 million but it didn’t open in China so it’s the fifth largest worldwide opening of all time behind The Fate of the Furious, The Force Awakens, Jurassic World and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. The Last Jedi’s grand total for the weekend was a mind blowing $450 million. This gross also put Disney over $2 billion for total worldwide grosses for 2017, the third year in a row they’ve done so.
Way, way back in second place was the movie sacrificed to the gods of the Force, Ferdinand, which opened to $13.3 million, the lowest ever opening for Fox’s Blue Sky Animation studio and slightly below the last kid’s movie that tried, probably futiley, to counter-program against Star Wars, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Chip, which made $14.2 million against The Force Awakens.
Coco dropped to third after dominating the last few weeks in first place, making another $10 million and bringing it to over $150 million for it’s four weeks out. Its also made $448 million total between domestic and international box office.
Wonder and Justice League rounded out the top 5 with the latter up to $633 million total.
Further down the list, The Disaster Artist took a surprising tumble from fourth place last week down to eighth place this week, despite excellent word of mouth, awards buzz and more theaters this past weekend, so it’s not really clear, besides everyone going to Star Wars, what caused such a nosedive.
Also further down the list, The Shape of Water is inching toward the top ten, expanding to another 117 theaters over the weekend and moving up to 12th place with another $1.7 million