Star Wars an unstoppable force

And just like that, despite its mixed reception, Star Wars: The Last Jedi became the biggest film of 2017.

The third Star Wars film under the Disney banner has hit US$517 million ($727m) domestically just 17 days into its release, according to studio estimates yesterday. That vaults it past another Disney movie, Beauty and the Beast (US$504 million), according to Box Office Mojo.

The Last Jedi (US$1.04 billion) now sets its sights on surpassing Beauty and the Beast (US$1.26b) in worldwide gross, too.

Since Disney jump-started the franchise in 2015, all three of its Star Wars films, including The Force Awakens (US$2.07b) and Rogue One (US$1.06b) have each hit the billion-dollar mark in global gross.

The Last Jedi, starring Mark Hamill, has the greatest reviewer-audience gulf among live-action Star Wars films on Rotten Tomatoes: a 91 per cent certified "fresh" critical score compared to a 51 per cent audience score. On Metacritic, the chasm is an 86 average critical score v a 4.6 (out of 10) user score.

Writer-director Rian Johnson's film is proving indomitable at the North American box office, though, grossing US$52.4m this weekend to edge out Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle ($50.5m).

Powered by Pixar's Coco and Marvel's Thor: Ragnarok, Disney has won seven of the year's final eight domestic box-office weekends.

Disney/Lucasfilm's next Star Wars release, Solo, is due to land in late May. Overall, the domestic box office topped US$11b for the third straight year.