

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has now cleared upwards of $900 million at the worldwide box office by the end of its third weekend, making a finish of over $1 billion inevitable.

The latest update from Deadline puts The Rise of Skywalker at $918 million, with the weekend bringing in $33.7 million from the United States and Canada and $50.5 million from everywhere else for an $84.2 million total for the weekend. Since last weekend, the movie’s total has risen by $87.8 million domestically and $106 million internationally, and at the current pace, the movie should cross the $1 billion mark by either next weekend or early in the week after that. How high the last Star Wars movie in the Skywalker saga will rise from there, we won’t know for certain until more numbers come in, but it seems likely that a total soaring above $1.1 billion is on the cards. That would bring the sequel trilogy up to $4.5 billion, which would make the movie average at $1.5 billion per film against a combined net production budget of $733.6 million, which would be a return-on-investment of over six times what they spent on filming before accounting for advertising costs. The movie will likely cross $500 million overseas before it crosses $500 million domestic, given the $468 million international total versus the $450.7 million domestic total.

Ultimately, it appears as though The Rise of Skywalker is performing more like a sequel to The Last Jedi rather than the culmination of 42 years of movies, which is still a vastly profitable result for Lucasfilm and Disney. Expecting Avengers: Endgame numbers for this film was never realistic given that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been building momentum in all markets while Star Wars has had difficulties breaking out in some regions, and Disney quite frankly weren’t expecting The Rise of Skywalker to make those kinds of numbers. Realistically, the $2 billion-plus success of The Force Awakens is a result of a number of factors – ten years without a main installment in the franchise, the return of the original trilogy stars after more than three decades, and a perfect holiday frame to ensure that the movie demolished box office records amidst an absence of any real competition – that are not likely to be replicated for Star Wars, which is perfectly fine for a brand that has brought in almost consistent success at the box office (Solo aside).

This latest installment making more than $1 billion on a $275 million budget is something that Lucasfilm can cash in on as they prepare their next set of movies (which should benefit from a hiatus). The Rise of Skywalker should end its run as becoming either the second-highest (after Endgame) or third-highest (after The Lion King, which is where it currently is) domestic release of 2019, and will comfortably sit somewhere around the upper-middle portion of the Top 10 for the year at the global box office (eight of those movies made over a billion, with The Rise of Skywalker looking to become the ninth movie to join that club). Disney’s average for the 10 movies that they released last year is now well over $1B per film, although given how franchise-loaded this year was, it’s not likely that they will have a year this lucrative again for quite some time. With the holidays now out of the way (aside from Martin Luther King Day the weekend after the next), the weekday grosses for the movie will likely see the daily box office grosses decline as more people go back to work or school, but there should be little keeping The Rise of Skywalker from rising above $500M domestic, with a $600M+ domestic finish still within the realm of possibility.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is now playing in theaters.