The battle to be the biggest film of 2017 at the UK box office looks like going right to the wire, with Star Wars: The Last Jedi still needing another £20 million to beat Beauty And The Beast.
Episode VIII has now taken an enormous £53 million in UK cinemas since it opened just under a fortnight ago.
But with only five days of the year remaining, The Last Jedi has its work cut out if it is to pass the £72.4 million taken by Beauty And The Beast.
Films in the Star Wars franchise topped the UK box office chart in both 2015 and 2016, with The Force Awakens and Rogue One ending up taking £125.4 million and £65.9 million respectively.
For The Last Jedi to also end the year a chart-topper, it needs to take around £4 million in ticket sales every day between now and January 1.
Walt Disney Studios, which is distributing the film, said that The Last Jedi is on course to finish at least second in the chart, one place ahead of Dunkirk.
Given that Disney co-produced Beauty And The Beast, the company could end up with the year’s two biggest films.
Meanwhile, The Last Jedi has moved further up the chart of how every Star Wars film has performed at the UK box office.
It has now passed 2002’s Attack Of The Clones (£49.7 million) and 2005’s Revenge Of The Sith (£48.4 million), along with two of the original Star Wars films – 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back (£30.4 million) and 1983’s Return Of The Jedi (£14.2 million).
All figures have been adjusted for inflation.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article