Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Was #1 Movie in the UK for 2016
With just hours to go on Saturday, the final day of the year, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story passed [...]
With just hours to go on Saturday, the final day of the year, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story passed Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them at the British box office, taking the top spot of 2016. It did so in only 17 days at the UK box office, versus the month and a half for Fantastic Beasts.
Like in the US, Finding Dory, Captain America: Civil War, and The Jungle Book also did well for Disney in the UK, rounding out (with Rogue One) four of the top ten releases across the pond. Still, Rogue One's success, taking first place in so short a time, can't be oversold. Star Wars films, shot largely in England and with significantly British casts, do trend well in the UK, and British director Gareth Edwards has a lot to smile about this week.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story also finished second for the year in the U.S., behind Finding Dory and passing Captain America: Civil War on December 31. That gave Disney four of the top five domestic, with The Jungle Book coming in at #5. Add Zootopia and Doctor Strange, and the majority of the top ten films in the US were made by Disney.
In the more general foreign box office, international markets are not quite keeping pace with the U.S. for Rogue One, but not by much. As of Sunday, Rogue One had $440 million in the states, and $350 million overseas. The newest Star Wars movie debuts in China, the world's second largest movie market, this weekend. The hope for Lucasfilm and Disney is that the two Chinese stars, Jiang Wen and Donnie Yen, will bolster box office there. At this point, a billion dollar worldwide gross when all is said and done is nearly assured for Rogue One, a huge feat for the first standalone non-saga film in the franchise.
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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."