Disney/Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker has officially crossed the $1B mark globally, becoming Disney’s 7th release of 2019 to the milestone. The epic saga-ending installment is also the 9th film of the year to get there (along with Sony’s Spider-Man: Far From Home and Warner Bros’ Joker). The Star Wars pic’s accomplishment is not so much a surprise as it was just a question of when.
Through Tuesday, Skywalker counts $481.3M domestic and $519.7M at the international box office for a worldwide pull of $1.001B to date.
The JJ Abrams-directed Rise Of Skywalker has now become the 4th of the most recent Star Wars titles to pass $1B worldwide, even if it still lags 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Offshore, the film is behind The Last Jedi by 15% (at current exchange rates), and will not end up catching that movie’s final (unadjusted) take of $712.4M. Instead, now that the holidays are over, it’s looking like it will round out anywhere from $550M-$580M overseas. North America should end up cuming over $500M, so all-in ultimately around $1.1B worldwide.
The current Top 10 offshore markets are: UK ($72M), Germany ($61.7M), Japan ($56.4M), France ($50.7M), Australia ($30.3M), China ($20.1M), Spain ($20.1M), Mexico ($16M), Italy ($14.7M) and Brazil ($12.9M). The Top 5 are in keeping with normal Star Wars play.
Skywalker‘s latest benchmark caps off a year of Disney dominance at the box office which overall recorded new records globally ($42.5B) and overseas ($31.1B). Disney’s 2019 worldwide gross was $11.12B (without Fox) and including $7.354 from international turnstiles, exceeding its entire global performance of 2018.
The other 2019 Disney movies to cross $1B are Avengers: Endgame, The Lion King, Frozen 2, Captain Marvel, Aladdin and Toy Story 4.
Disney’s 2019 achievement is remarkable, but 2020 is not filled with sequels or mega-franchise movies and the thinking is that this will create a more evenly spread out field among the majors.