Refresh for latest…: Star Wars: The Last Jedi has now crossed the $1.2B global mark, overtaking both Captain America: Civil War and Minions to become the No. 13 movie of all time worldwide. The Rian Johnson-helmed epic now stands at $1,205.2M.
At the international box office, it added $64.7M to take the offshore cume to $632.7M. Of that, only $28.7M came from China where Star Wars has had a rough time cracking the market. Although Jedi is currently running 33% ahead of Rogue One at the same stage of international play, it is unlikely it will reach that movie’s $69.5M Middle Kingdom final (at historical rates). In local currency, Rogue One did RMB 224M over its three-day bow last year, and TLJ’s number is RMB 186M.
The Last Jedi was not going to be an easy win in China which has little familiarity with the franchise and thus no built-in nostalgia. Also, sci-fi is not the go-to genre for local audiences and there is a homegrown comedy threequel that’s scoring big in its 2nd frame this session.
Disney has done its level best to carve out a niche for Star Wars. In 2015 it put 500 Stormtroopers on the Great Wall and recruited Lu Han as the official ambassador. Rogue One featured mega-stars Jiang Wen and Donnie Yen in what felt like organic roles. But as we’ve noted before, there was little in the Last Jedi story to up the ante there. The on-the-ground Disney team worked hard to promote the film and raise awareness, with locally-tailored materials. But the 2nd and 3rd tier cities were particularly blasé, we hear.
For more on China and The Last Jedi, see my previous story.
Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle swings into China next Friday which will act as another factor working against the Resistance. As expected, the film has rumbled across the $500M global mark today, lifting its cume to $514M after a $70M 3rd frame internationally where the total is $275M in 86 markets. It retained No. 1s in 50 of those and is showing great momentum.
The only new wide opener overseas was Insidious: The Last Key which topped the start of all three of the previous installments with $20.1M in 33 markets. Sony has international on the Blumhouse movie.
Elsewhere, Disney/Pixar’s Coco is kissing $400M international and $600M global, hitting those milestones in the next week, and with Korea, the UK and Japan still to go. Universal’s Pitch Perfect 3 added nine markets and crossed $50M overseas.
We are still waiting on numbers from Fox. Warner Bros and Paramount are not reporting today.
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