Smashing through one box office record after another, Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi quickly became the highest grossing movie of 2017 – much to the surprise of no one. Currently sitting at $1.29 billion, it’s been a massive success by all accounts – well, maybe except for its stumble in China – and the suits at Disney are no doubt very, very pleased about it. But it turns out that even after all that, Episode VIII will still fall slightly short of where initial estimates put it at.
If you remember, analysts predicted The Last Jedi to finish its theatrical run in the $1.6 billion range, which could have made it one of the top 5 highest grossing films of all-time. Now, however, those figures have been revised, with the pic expected to finish up at around $1.3 billion. Sure, that’s not a very big difference, but it is interesting to learn as for the past little while, all we’ve heard about is how much money the latest chapter in the Skywalker saga was making.
Still, even despite that, The Last Jedi is continuing to hit impressive milestones, with the latest one being $600 million at the domestic box office. At the time of writing, it’s earned $604.3 million on this side of the pond, which places it in sixth on the all-time list of highest grossing movies domestically. For comparison’s sake, The Force Awakens did a staggering $936.6 million stateside. Then again, Rogue One only did $532 million, so this certainly isn’t anything to scoff at.
Looking further ahead, we’ve also been hearing a lot about the upcoming Blu-ray release. Unfortunately, Lucasfilm has yet to make any kind of official announcements, but rumors point to March being when we can take it home, while another report told us that it’ll include 2 hours of bonus footage and deleted scenes. Oh, and did we mention it may be in 4K, too? In other words, this is one disc that you’ll definitely want to buy.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi may not be a perfect sequel, after a portion of the fanbase (and Mark Hamill) initially took issue with Johnson’s creative vision, but all in all, it’s been a huge success and has us very excited to see what comes next from Lucasfilm’s crown jewel. Speaking of which, we’ll be able to do just that in a few short months, when Solo: A Star Wars Story touches down in theaters on May 25th after a fairly rocky production.