Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Hauls in $17.7 Million Monday

The first Monday in the box office for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story built on its strong momentum with an estimated $17.7 million on the day. That's the fourth best Monday box office in December (or, in fact from August-December), falling behind, naturally, two Mondays from Star Wars: The Force Awakens and one from Avatar.

Overall, Rogue One landed at 24 on the list of best Mondays ever, a list absolutely dominated by genre entertainment, with the likes of Star Wars, Spider-Man, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Batman (The Dark Knight), Deadpool, Avengers, and Harry Potter all on that list. The only non-genre movie above Rogue One, in fact, is American Sniper.

Nothing is likely to take down Star Wars: The Force Awakens and its dominant first two Mondays, which could hold their own against most movies' opening Fridays at $40.1 million and $31.3 million. That movie had a unique perfect storm of marketing and anticipation that literally cannot be replicated - 30 years of sequel anticipation plus the first of Disney's Star Wars movies plus the return of the biggest stars and a marquee director all meant that movie was destined for a special brand of box office greatness. Its first Monday was also bolstered by a much greater percentage of school-age kids off for break already last year - 73% versus only 37% this year, according to ComScore.

Still, at a now domestic gross of $172.7 million on its first four days, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is going strong. The second weekend goes up against a difficult task, with the Christmas Eve and Christmas holidays landing on Saturday and Sunday this year.

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is in theaters now. Directed by Gareth Edwards, it's the first of the new standalone features from Lucasfilm and Disney, which take place outside the core "Skywalker Saga" of films noted by an Episode number. Rogue One tells the story of the small band of rebels that were tasked with stealing the plans to the first Death Star. The story spins directly off the opening crawl from the original Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. In that crawl, it read: "Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet."