“Beauty and the Beast” was just dethroned as the highest grossing movie of the year
Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast had an extremely good year. The remake of the classic animated film grossed $1.26 billion in 2017. But despite that impressive ranking, it ultimately failed to earn the title of highest grossing movie of 2017 domestically. Thanks to some stiff cinematic competition, the beloved fairytale took a still-impressive second place title for highest-grossing films. The winner? Oh, just a little movie set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi rang in 2018 by surpassing $1 billion in worldwide grosses. The latest installment of the interstellar franchise earned $120.4 million worldwide on New Year’s Eve weekend alone. This makes it the eight highest-grossing domestic movie of all time — no small feat. The Last Jedi earned $517.1 domestically, and $1.04 billion worldwide. That means The Last Jedi is currently sitting pretty as the 24th highest grossing movie of all time worldwide.
That’s not to say that Beauty and the Beast has anything to feel bad about. In fact, it actually surpassed The Last Jedi internationally. But domestically, the Force was with the Star Wars franchise. It beat out the musical by $13.1 million, and cemented its place as a tope-earning 2017 film.
This was a good years for movies in general. Four films earned over $1 billion worldwide, including The Fate of the Furious and Despicable Me 3. Overall 2017 film earnings reached $11.12 billion. This is slightly lower than last years’ $11.38 billion, but still an extremely impressive result. And with awards season right around the corner (plus some seriously chilly temperatures), now’s the perfect time to head to the theater.
We can’t wait to see what movies make it big in 2018!
