Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is giving Star Wars: The Last Jedi a run for its money. While the Star Wars film is still one of the highest-grossing films of the year, the Jumanji sequel overtook it on New Year’s Day, earning $16.2 million in North America, compared to $14.5 million for the Disney and Lucasfilm’s The Last Jedi.
Cool way to kick off 2018. Very grateful for the fans coming out in masses to see our movie. Glad you’re having fun! #Jumanji https://t.co/ZsxpkYJV3Z
— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) January 3, 2018
For the weekend overall, The Last Jedi beat Jumanji, with an estimated $67 million, pushing its global box office sales total to $1.067 billion, including $531.9 million domestically.
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If you’re surprised to hear of Jumanji‘s New Year’s Day success over The Last Jedi, you’re not alone. The film has performed much better than expected since its Dec. 20 release, grossing $185.6 million to date in North America for a worldwide cumulative approaching $350 million. Its domestic earnings for the four-day holiday weekend were $66.3 million.
Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, Nick Jonas and Bobby Cannavale join forces in the sequel to the Robin Williams flick as high school students who are transported into the Jumanji video game, where they become avatars.
Johnson tweeted his support for the film’s strong release thus far calling it a “cool way to kick off 2018.”
The Last Jedi is still pacing 28% behind its prequel, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which earned $742 million during the year-end holiday two years ago. At the same time, Last Jedi has already passed the entire lifetime gross of the 2016 stand-alone film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ($1.06 billion) and will soon overtake fellow Disney title Beauty and the Beast ($1.26 billion) to rank as the top release of 2017.
