Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Weekend Debut Is #1 Worldwide – Here Are the Numbers
The weekend debut of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story earned them a total of $290.5 million in worldwide sales, quickly earning them back the $200 million spent on the production budget. The movie did amazingly well in premium theaters like IMAX, earning nearly $30 million in worldwide sales from IMAX alone. Of these sales, $155 million of overall worldwide box office sales came from North America, and around $20 million of those sales came from IMAX theaters.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is now the second highest grossing December debut in history, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter, with Star Wars: The Force Awakens remaining at number one. If Rogue One: A Star Wars Story follows in its predecessor’s footsteps, it’s estimated that the movie will pull in a couple billion dollars in global sales and settle down nicely next to The Force Awakens, which pulled in $247.9 million at its debut at North American theatres and a grand total of over $2 billion in global box-office sales. The Force Awakens settled at its current spot as the third highest grossing film ever.
There is undeniably a HUGE gap between the numbers that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story pulled in this weekend and what we’ve seen from the other films that are currently in theaters. Following behind Rogue One is Moana, which roped in $11.7 million over the weekend, which isn’t bad for going on its 4th week in theaters, but far, far behind is Will Smith’s weekend release, Collateral Beauty, which bombed at $7 million in domestic sales and will need to see some bigger numbers in order to make back their $36 million production budget.  Although Collateral Beauty was a more personal project which helped him cope with the death of his father and gained a heartwarming popularity among older offices, the movie is a career low for Smith, but who can really compete against Star Wars?