Star Wars disarms Harry Potter at the box office.

A critical hit, Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi is on course to challenge The Force Awakens to become the highest-grossing Star Wars movie in history.

What’s more, following the release of The Last Jedi in cinemas on December 15, 2017, in the space of just two weeks the movie helped officially catapult Star Wars ahead of the Harry Potter series, making the saga the second-biggest movie franchise of all time (behind the Marvel Cinematic
Universe’s $13 billion box-offi ce gross).
As fireworks marked the beginning of 2018 (and Ewoks danced on the forest moon of Endor in celebration), The Last Jedi had already grossed more
than $1 billion worldwide, having made $220,009,584 in U.S. cinemas alone over the course of its opening weekend.
That also makes it the second most successful opening for any Star Wars movie ever, eclipsed only by J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens, which was  released in 2015.
So how many dollars does it take for Jedi Knights to beat a school of trainee witches and wizards? Taken together, the Skywalker saga’s eight movies  plus stand-alone story Rogue One have taken $8,556,678,930 at the box offi ce (as this issue went to print), while Potter’s eight wizarding  adventures (plus those of Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) have earned $8,539,253,704. That’s a difference of $17,425,226. That might not sound like much in the world of movie budgets, but Star Wars has got it where it counts.