Box Office: 'Jumanji' Overtakes 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' on New Year's Day

'Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle' is a huge win for Sony as it relaunches the long-dormant property.

Sony's holiday hit Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle overtook Star Wars: The Last Jedi for the first time on New Year's Day, earning $16.2 million in North America.

That compares to $14.5 million for Disney and Lucasfilm's The Last Jedi.

At the same time, Last Jedi beat Jumanji for the weekend with an estimated $67 million, pushing the tentpole's global total to $1.067 billion, including $531.9 million domestically.

Jumanji, performing far better than expected since hitting theaters Dec. 20, has grossed $185.6 million to date in North America for a worldwide cume approaching $350 million. Its domestic earnings for the four-day holiday weekend were $66.3 million.

Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, Nick Jonas and Bobby Cannavale make up the cast of the film about a group of kids who are transported into the Jumanji video game, where they become avatars. No one in Hollywood expected Jumanji to become such a force, but it quickly transformed into an all-audience tentpole and family favorite.

To date, Last Jedi, a sequel to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is pacing 28 percent behind the $742 million earned by The Force Awakens during the year-end holiday corridor two years ago. At the same time, Last Jedi has already passed the entire lifetime gross of the 2016 stand-alone film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ($1.06 billion) and will soon overtake fellow Disney title Beauty and the Beast ($1.26 billion) to rank as the top release of 2017. Disney has said all along that Force Awakens benefited from huge pent-up demand.

The next big test for Last Jedi is on Friday, when it opens in China.