‘The Phantom Menace’ Re-Release Nabs a $8.7M Box Office Haul Over Opening Weekend, A Result Surpassed Only by Avatar
The 25th Anniversary reissue of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is working – it’s working! The return of Episode I brought with it a most impressive $8.723M Friday to Sunday haul, being one of the best re-releases for a movie in the past decade. The split is made up of a $2.43M Friday, a $4.593M Saturday, and a $1.7M Sunday, between 2,700 theaters across the United States and Canada. Included in the Friday numbers is also about $300K from the nine-movie Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga marathon that arrived to hype up the big May the Fourth fan holiday.
In terms of comparisons in the past decade, only Avatar‘s $10.5M 2022 re-release ahead of its long-awaited sequel did better in its debut weekend, while The Phantom Menace re-release beat the likes of the $6.7M weekend haul of the 2023 re-release for Titanic, the $6.1M weekend haul for the 2019 re-release of Avengers: Endgame, the $5.4M weekend haul for the 2022 re-release of Spider-Man: No Way Home, and the $4.7M weekend haul for the 2023 re-release of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
International data also indicates that the movie has brought in an additional $6.4M overseas, which when combined with Monday’s $531.49K (and change) total brings this run of The Phantom Menace up to a global haul of $15.654M so far, making the film the forty-fourth highest-grossing movies of all time (displacing Frozen II) and the twenty-second highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office (displacing Finding Dory, Despicable Me 3, and Jurassic Park) – with both numbers having a chance to climb as the film continues its run.
Safe to say, it seems like Star Wars re-releases could be a regular annual (or semi-annual) fixture if things keep up. Next year marks the 20th Anniversary of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and the 10th Anniversary of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, both of which would also potentially lend themselves to the idea of massive marathons.
Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.
