Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Just in time for the new year, The Last Jedi has cleared the $1 billion mark in worldwide grosses. Domestically, it’s now passed Beauty and the Beast as 2017’s top-grossing movie.
It’s only just behind Rogue One as the eighth highest-grossing domestic movie of all time, and with only $15 million between them, is likely to pass it within a day or two.
The Last Jedi continues to dominate at the box office, passing Wonder Woman‘s box office total on Tuesday. With $423.7 million, it’s now #2 for 2017 and may very well beat Beauty of the Beast’s $504M to take the top spot by the end of the year.
The film took in $32 million on Christmas day and becoming the second-highest holiday grosser, behind only The Force Awakens.
The Last Jedi slides into the weekend box office with a $220 million take, putting it behind only The Force Awakens for the second biggest opening weekend of all time.
Internationally, where it opened everywhere but China, the film has made $240M, giving it $450M total. It opens in China on January 5.
How many times have you seen it so far?
The Last Jedi made $45 million domestically on Thursday night, a number dwarfed only by The Force Awakens’ $57 million back in 2015. Variety predicts that the full Friday figures (which will include Thursday) will come out in the $95-98M range. The movie is expected to pass $200M over the entire opening weekend.
Entertainment Weekly’s Anthony Breznican looks into if the crew of the Hammerhead in Rogue One survived the battle over Scarif. The answer? Spoiler: Sort of.
→ Also at EW, the creative team for Marvel’s Rogue One adaptation. Like The Force Awakens, it’ll be a six-issue series, but this one is written by Jody Houser and illustrated by Emilio Laiso. The first issue is due out in April. (That Phil Noto cover sure looks familiar…)
→ A new look at K-2SO from ABC gives us a look at Alan Tudyk in a different last scene for the droid.
→ io9’s Germain Lussier talks to editor John Gilroy about the film, focusing on the third act.
→ The origin of Jyn Erso’s name isn’t going to be feeding any of those Dark Forces conspiracy theories, sorry.
→ Shocking, Rogue One is up for several categories in the VES Awards. It’s also up for a Costume Designers Guild Award.
→ China isn’t that into it: Rogue One opens softer than The Force Awakens did.
A nice video that shows many of the trailer/commercial shots that weren’t in the final film.
→ /Film takes a look at Darth Vader’s Mustafar digs, including the history, the ground-laying done in Rebels, and the hints that we may see it again fairly soon.
→ At The Verge, Andrew Liptak calls Mike Stackpole’s X-wing novels the “spiritual ancestor” of Rogue One.
→ And speaking of things revived from the murky Star Wars past, Force Material is all over the Whills, who’ve been around (vaguely) since the very beginning.
→ Rogue One has helped push Disney over the $7B global box office mark in 2016 – the first movie studio to do so.
→ DK has several behind-the-scenes photos | Alternate pun-filled titles for Michael Giacchino’s score | Gareth Edwards on the cameras and technology behind the film.
The weekend box office estimates are in, and Rogue One has a comfortable lead with $155 million. As predicted, this makes it the second biggest December box office opening of all time – behind only The Force Awakens.
It’s the third biggest opening weekend of 2016, following only Captain America: Civil War and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. This also makes it the second biggest Star Wars opening of all time. (Not taking inflation into account, at least.)
A couple of looks at the Rogue One concept art from io9 and Yahoo. The Art of Rogue One is on sale now.
→ Rogue One made $71.1M through Friday, and is still well on track for a $145-150M weekend.
→ It says sad things about the state of women’s paychecks in Hollywood that it’s actually news that Felicity Jones was by far Rogue One’s highest-paid cast member. A more bizarre wrinkle: Jones has a single sequel option in her contract. (Though I’m not sure why THR brings up “a young Luke Skywalker stand-alone” in relation to that, considering that the only speculation regarding Luke and Jyn was Jossed by the film itself.)
→ /Film takes a look at the trailer footage that was missing from the film.
→ How that one effect raises some ethical considerations. As for some of the later stuff, it wasn’t all pure digital: Some things come straight from unused A New Hope footage.
→ Phil Noto has graced us with some Erso art.
→ Did you catch all the Rebels references in Rogue One? Nerdist has the list. And a Toys R Us promo posters reveals which Rogue One character is coming to Rebels.
→ Vulture pins down Rogue One’s greatest retcon. Meanwhile, over at Wired, architects and engineers nitpick the Death Star.
→ All the crazy, convoluted ways that the Rebels stole the Death Star plans in the old Expanded Universe. They’re almost all video games, which… Okay.
→ Are Chirrut and Baze a couple? “I think that’s all good. Who knows? You’d have to speak to them,” Gareth Edwards says.
→ Your moment of zen: Ranking Star Wars’ “sweet space capes.”
Rogue One is is already making box office records – sort of. It’s nabbed the second-highest first day for pre-sales in domestic box office history, second only to The Force Awakens. This is according to Imax CEO Greg Foster, who said their portion of the sales are “on the high end of the range of what the blockbuster biggest titles have done.”
This is well in line with the tracking, which predicts the film’s opening weekend will be in the range of $120M-150M – putting it well above almost all previous December openings. The Force Awakens’ $248M is the current record-holder, but #2 is currently The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey with $85M.
Entertainment Weekly’s Anthony Breznican has the most extensive interview yet with composer Michael Giacchino on Rogue One. Giacchino says the film is “in many ways a really great World War II movie” with “this huge, huge heart.” He reveals that he does use “little moments” of the classic John Williams, but ” the score is 95 percent original.” Read
→ While EW gives us extended chunks of coverage, Empire magazine dribbles out a new photo and a few quotes regarding Gareth Edwards’ being hands-on with filming. But hey, they do have a bunch of character covers.
→ Rogue One is tracking for a big debut – in the range of $120M-150M. If this bears out, it could be the second-biggest December opening – after The Force Awakens.
→ Riz Ahmed profiled by the Wall Street Journal.
→ Spoiler corner: The first twenty minutes of the film was shown on the promotional tour in Mexico, and Making Star Wars has a few (though not extensive) details about the film’s title card.