Walt Disney Studios To Cross $6 Billion Mark Today At Global Box Office Thanks To The Force

The box office success of Star Wars: The Last Jedi is just what Walt Disney Studios needed to cross the $6B mark for the year. It is expected to hit that milestone today, making it the first and only studio to reach this milestone twice and to have done so in consecutive years. With a $610.5M take (and climbing) from The Last Jedi, 2017 is now Disney’s second best year ever, surpassing the 2015 total of $5.845B. It also marks one of the biggest in the history of entertainment. The best year ever for Disney continues to be the record $7.6B it enjoyed in 2016.

Disney can also boast that it is the only studio to break the $5B mark globally three consecutive years running. Actually, four of the top nine international releases came from this past year for the studio as did four of the top nine worldwide releases. They had the No. 1 player worldwide with Beauty and the Beast, which opened in March to a $174.8M debut and went on to gross $1.263B.

Other films that helped boost Disney’s $6B year globally included 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story which earned $309.3M of its $1.05B global total during the 2017 calendar year. Similarly, the 2016 animated release Moana earned $252M of its $643.3M global total during this year.

The Last Jedi propelled the company’s box office domestically as well, passing the $2B mark — also for the third consecutive year and the only studio in town to accomplish that as well. Star Wars: The Last Jedi opened to a whopping $220M domestically this month (12/15) and has since risen to $296.5M. And that’s before this Christmas to New Year’s holiday when turnstiles should continue at a healthy churn.

Let’s look at some of the studio’s records:

Four of the Top Five domestic debuts of 2017 were from Disney, including the Top Three (No 1. with The Last Jedi, No. 2 with Beauty and the Beast, No. 3 with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and No. 4 with Thor: Ragnarok)

It also enjoyed four of the Top seven domestic releases this year, including No. 1 Beauty and the Beast. It is the fifth consecutive year that at least four studio releases surpassed $200M domestically and three sailed past $700M globally.

The studio also enjoyed the second consecutive year that it has posted four $100M+ domestic debuts.