Star Wars: The Last Jedi Crosses $1B Box Office Mark

Many fans are split between what they think of the latest installment in the Star Wars franchise. One thing is undeniable however, the movie is now a certified box office success. Crossing the $1.04B mark worldwide through Sunday’s estimates makes it the 4th movie to do so in 2017. It joins Despicable Me 3, The Fate of the Furious and Beauty and the Beast for that $1B club. It is also Disney‘s second movie to reach that level this year. However, considering they also own the Marvel property, they have made quite a bit of money with Guardians of the Galaxy 2 ($863.7M), Thor: Ragnarok ($848.0M) and Spider-Man: Homecoming ($880.2M). Much of the regular Disney offerings unfortunately are very underwhelming such as Pirates of the Caribbean 5 and Cars 3. These two take home $172.6M and $152.9M respectively. Minus Star Wars: The Last Jedi, their earnings are actually down by 20% from 2016.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Still Going Strong

Episode VIII is beloved by critics and currently sits at a 91% fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating. It has 317 positive reviews with 31 negative reviews from professional critics. The audience Rotten Tomatoes score however, is only at 51%. Which means about half of the audiences who saw it did not like it.

Despite the split from fans, many are still watching the movie and attracting new audiences. It actually outperformed Beauty and the Beast for domestic earnings ($517.1M vs $504M). Analysts expect it to grow further up to $533.7M by Monday. It still has to make $195.4M to beat The Fate of the Furious‘ worldwide gross, and $223.1M more to beat Beauty and the Beast‘s total for the year.