Second place to The Force Awakens for domestic premiere
Star Wars: The Last Jedi booked $220 million over its first weekend, second to its predecessor The Force Awakens for best debut weekend of all time.
The Last Jedi ’s $104.7 million opening day on Friday is also second all-time to The Force Awakens, which did $119.1 million when it premiered Dec. 18,2015, and then $247.9 million for its first weekend.
The weekend total and Sunday total for The Last Jedi is a projection, but reported by multiple sites.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is now the fourth film to gross more than $200 million domestically in its first weekend. The other two are 2015’s Jurassic World, now at No. 3 ($208.8 million), and 2012’s The Avengers, fourth place at $207.4 million. Three of these four films are owned by Disney.
The Last Jedi ’s open also compares well to last year’s Star Wars movie, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, whose opening weekend of Dec. 16-18 earned $155.1 million domestically.
The totals for The Last Jedi track the estimates made after Thursday evening previews pulled in $45 million from select markets, also second best all-time domestically.
Written and directed by Rian Johnson, Star Wars: The Last Jedi comes in as 93 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes’ “Tomatometer,” (meaning percentage of positive reviews) with an average rating of 8.2 out of 10. Among top critics, just one has given it a negative review.
Polygon’s (unscored) review praised the film, saying it “walks the tricky line of surprising a savvy audience while also following its franchises’ familiar symmetries and tropes.”
However, at 2 hours and 33 minutes, it’s by far the longest of the nine movies (trilogy entries plus Rogue One), 11 minutes more than 2002’s Attack of the Clones. Plan accordingly.
