Having debuted to the biggest Thursday previews of the year, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story got its domestic run underway yesterday, with the Gareth Edwards-directed Anthology movie lighting up the box office with a Friday gross of $71 million.
Rogue One’s haul is the third-biggest opening day of the year behind Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ($81 million) and Captain America: Civil War ($75 million), and the twelfth biggest in history after The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 ($71.6 million). Weekend projections now range from between $150 and $175 million.
International numbers for Friday are yet to come in, but the film had grossed $33 million outside of the U.S. by close of play on Thursday.
SEE ALSO: Gareth Edwards on incorporating unused footage from A New Hope into Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
From Lucasfilm comes the first of the Star Wars standalone films, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, an all-new epic adventure. In a time of conflict, a group of unlikely heroes band together on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empire’s ultimate weapon of destruction. This key event in the Star Wars timeline brings together ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things, and in doing so, become part of something greater than themselves.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is out now and features a cast that includes Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything), Diego Luna (Milk), Ben Mendelsohn (The Dark Knight Rises), Donnie Yen (Ip Man), Jiang Wen (Let the Bullets Fly), Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Alan Tudyk (Con Man), Riz Ahmed (Nightcrawler), Genevieve O’Reilly (Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith), Jimmy Smits (Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones), James Earl Jones (Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope), Valene Kane (The Fall), Alistair Petrie (The Night Manager), Warwick Davis (Star Wars: Episode IV – Return of the Jedi), Ian McElhinney (Game of Thrones) and Jonathan Aris (Sherlock).
