Rogue One Posts Near-Record Tuesday Box Office on the Way To $350 Million

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story posted a near-record day on Tuesday for December Tuesday box office receipts. The movie only fell short behind two Tuesdays recorded by Star Wars: The Force Awakens last year - not bad company to be in.

The Tuesday box office of $22.6 million was a five million dollar uptick from last Tuesday, and the #7 best on that day of the week in any month. It also gives Star Wars as a franchise four of the top six Tuesdays in December ever, sharing time with Les Miserable in 2012 (which debuted on Tuesday, Christmas Day that year and undoubtedly got a boost from that), and Avatar in 2009, both of which fall below this week but slightly above last week's take.

All told, this puts Rogue One: A Star Wars Story at $340.8 million so far in just twelve days in the box office, and by all accounts it should hit $350m today. With essentially no new competition this weekend, Rogue One could pull in a third straight #1 weekend, and is on pace to take second in overall gross for the Star Wars franchise as early as its third full week in theaters.

Many pundits were unsure whether Rogue One would have the legs it now appears to. With an international box office that's keeping pace fairly well with domestic and a couple of major markets opening early in the new year, the film may be looking at a billion dollar gross worldwide after all is said and done. January is fairly light on box office blockbusters, though there are a handful of genre releases. Still, with buzz now high and Star Wars nostalgia increased, Rogue One shouldn't lose many of its 4,157 opening theaters anytime in the near future, further holding its pace strongly.

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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."