'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Heads for $425M-Plus Global Blastoff

For a third year in a row, Disney is rejuvenating the year-end holiday box office with a Star Wars movie. This time it’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which is poised to clear between $424 million-$440 million worldwide by the end of its first frame. In the U.S. and Canada, industry projections have had The Last Jedi around $200M for quite some time, and it will be playing in more theaters than last year’s 4,157 for the franchise’s first spinoff Rogue One.

After a sluggish summer, the worst in 11 years, stateside exhibitors couldn’t be happier with the presence of Last Jedi. Last year, even though Rogue One did 43% less business than Force Awakens at $532.1M, that pic spurred a $1.07 billion overall theatrical marketplace for the period of December 16-January 2; the year before with Force Awakens, the holiday frame also cleared $1 billion. So even if Last Jedi falls below this lofty round figure stateside tracking has been spotting, say as low as $185M, it’s still not the end of the world for exhibition or moviegoing.