In 2018, The Last Jedi Remains First
Box Office Mojo reports that Star Wars: The Last Jedi stayed at the top the box office for the third consecutive weekend. The latest installment in the saga about the galaxy’s most dysfunctional family earned $66.8 million in the last weekend of the year. The Last Jedi entered 2018 by grossing a bit over $1 billion in cinemas worldwide.
All in all, same movies dominated the last weekend of 2017 as the holiday weekend before. Except for The Last Jedi, all of these movies saw their gross increase during the last weekend of the year. In the second place of the weekend box office is still Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. This action adventure comedy starring Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan and Dwayne Johnson earned a bit over $66 million – almost twice as much as in its first weekend in cinemas. Musical Pitch Perfect 3 earned $21.6 million, bringing its domestic total up to $68.1 million. The Greatest Showman – another musical – is still holding on to the fourth place of the weekend box office with $20.9 million. Finally, the animated film Ferdinand concludes the top five list, having earned $14.8 million domestically.
Gillian Anderson Confirms Leaving The X-Files
In a recent article, TV Insider revealed interesting tidbits about the upcoming 11th season of The X-Files. Among them, actress Gillian Anderson – known for her portrayal of Federal Agent Dana Scully alongside David Duchovny’s Agent Fox Mulder – confirmed that this season will, in fact, be her last on the show. Several days later, in his interview for Collider, show’s creator Chris Carter added he wouldn’t do The X-Files without Anderson since, after all, the show is about her and Duchovny’s characters.
The X-Files first aired on FOX in September, 1993. Chris Carter’s moody TV show about investigators looking into conspiracy theories and supernatural phenomena turned to be an unexpected hit among the viewers and one of the pop-cultural milestones of the 1990s. Although the show was originally canceled in 2002 after nine seasons and two movies, it was revived in 2016. 11th season of The X-Files first aired on January 3rd, 2018.
Han Solo Solo Movie Ticking Along Just Fine
Composer John Williams contributed immensely to the Star Wars universe, providing the George Lucas’ space opera with a fittingly epic soundtrack. And yet, while Darth Vader got his Imperial March and both Luke and Leia had their own instantly recognizable music themes, Williams never got around to composing a theme for Harrison Ford’s Han Solo. According to Variety, Williams will rectify this omission as he is composing a Han Solo music theme for the upcoming stand-alone Star Wars movie about the early days of the galaxy’s most famous smuggler.
Happy New Year from Team #Solo. We’re pretty pumped for 2018 pic.twitter.com/Gy3WkkGBiA
— Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) January 1, 2018
Meanwhile, the movie’s director Ron Howard – himself a long-time Star Wars fan – is still teasing info about the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story. While fans are waiting for the first teaser trailer, Howard wished his Twitter followers a Happy New Year by tweeting an image of himself sitting in the cockpit of some kind of futuristic Star Wars vehicle. Currently, Solo: A Star Wars Story is officially scheduled for a release in May, 2018, although journalists speculate that the movie will probably be postponed until December, to be released at the same time as all other Star Wars movies produced by Disney.