2017 was a rough year all around — for politics, sports, and entertainment. The box office is just the latest sector to take a hit, seeing a nearly 2.5 percent decline from last year’s historic haul of $11.38 billion. Despite Star Wars: The Last Jedi raking in a considerable sum, it still wasn’t enough to offset the decline. The Star Wars film had the second-highest opening weekend ever, beating out another franchise film, The Force Awakens. “We will most likely wind up with a number around $11.1 billion,” Paul Dergarabedian, a senior analyst with the media measurement company comScore, toldVariety Tuesday. That $11.1 billion number is around $250 million less than the box office total in 2016.
It's not all bad. Variety noted that the approximated number of $11.1 billion would only be the third time that the box office hit $11 billion.
Black filmmakers played a critical role in this year’s box office success, including Girls Trip, which is the only film written, produced, directed and starring black people to have cracked the $100 million milestone at the box office and the highly successful Get Out, the most profitable film of 2017. Get Out also holds the distinction of having the highest-grossing debut for a writer-director based on an original screenplay.
Walt Disney Studios also benefited greatly from film sales in 2017, hitting the highly-sought $6 billion mark on Friday. The legendary film studio is also the only company to say they’ve broke the $5 billion milestone globally for three years in a row.
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